vdebate - Venezuela Debate

Electoral Fraud in Venezuela

2012-01-21T11:26:00.002-08:00

The Electoral Fraud that happened in Nicaragua could happen in Venezuela this October 2012, during our presidential elections. What can we do before this happens? Can the international community help us?
Let us know if you can help, and how.

Rosalba Guerra
(970)-462-4205

November 26th, 2011
IFES 1850 K Street,
NW Fifth Floor
Washington, DC 20006

The purpose of this letter is to ask for advice on what we could we do as Venezuelans about a fraudulent electoral system. The mission of your organization is “electoral assistance and democracy promotion”, so it seems that your organization is the right place to start.
We are hundreds of Venezuelans living overseas that worry about our Electoral System. We have different backgrounds and political views, but we all agree that Venezuela needs a transparent electoral system.
After we saw what happened in Nicaragua last November 6th, where Daniel Ortega won the election, some groups are saying that the elections were fraudulent and the OAS – Organization of American States – has said nothing important related with that issue, we are worried that the Power of money and Politics, in this case the Power of Hugo Chavez in the OAS, has not allowed the OAS to talk against all the abuse that Daniel Ortega committed before and during the elections. As Andres Oppenheimer wrote, the OAS made a bad “error” in Nicaragua (1): “What was most surprising about Nicaragua’s election on Sunday was not that President Daniel Ortega was reelected after a highly questionable electoral process, but that his victory got a seemingly unconditional blessing from 34-country Organization of American States chief Jose Miguel Insulza.” To start with Daniel Ortega should have never been a candidate in the Nicaraguan elections: Andres Oppenheimer(1) wrote: “in a near surreal maneuver, after failing to win enough votes in Congress to overturn the constitutional mandate, Ortega took advantage of a solidly loyal Supreme Court in 2009 to win a ruling declaring the constitutional ban unconstitutional.
We agree with the following statement from ESDATA in it’s report “The Systematic Annihilation of the Right to Vote in Venezuela” (3): It can be correctly stated that the CNE (4) is neither impartial nor transparent and does not guarantee confidence in ballot secrecy, and that contrary to the spirit of the constituent assembly that drafted the 1999 constitution, the selection of its directors was politicized and established with a governmental majority inflicting irreparable damage to the institution of voting.
We would like to go to Washington and have a meeting with someone in your organization who can assist give us with some guidance on what we should do as Venezuelan–Americans worried on how to mitigate fraud in our next elections.

Sincerely,

Rosalba Guerra Janet Goitia Edgar Sanchez

www.vdebate.org Colorado State Coordinator Orvex Member

www.orvex.org www.orvex.org

(970)462-4205

(1) http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/10/2494591/oas-makes-bad-error-in-nicaragua.html

(2) http://www.democracialatinoamerica.org/inicio/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Estrategy-Redlad_Nicaragua-dictactorial2011.pdf

(3) http://esdata.info/pdf/right-to-vote.pdf

(4)CNE or the Venezuelan Electoral National Council

Attack to Maria Corina

2011-11-13T08:23:00.002-08:00

This is the video of the aggression against Maria Corina Machado yesterday November 12, in Caracas. It seems that the attacker is a follower of Hugo Chavez, who hasn't said anything related to this aggression. Hugo Chavez doesn't represent the Venezuelans; we want a president that is against crime and not in favor of crime. He had talked of favor of Gadaffi and now on favor of Carlos "The Jackal", but he can't say anything related to the Maria Corina attack?

vdebate reporter

http://youtu.be/fB3onqJ6nMU

Rafael Ramirez: Venezuela oilman control the world's bigges oil reserves

2011-11-10T17:44:00.003-08:00

Rafael Ramírez (center), Venezuelan minister for energy and PDVSA CEO
By Virginia Lopez / The Guardian published by The Guardian.co.uk, on August 18, 2011

Rafael Ramírez should be ranked as one of the most powerful men in the world. As the Venezuelan minister for energy, he is also head of the country's state oil company – and, therefore, now controls the world's biggest proven oil reserves.
In a little-reported development, Opec recently certified that the South American nation was number one in national reserves, after a vast field of what was previously classified as tar was redefined as extra heavy crude. La Faja, as the heavy oil belt along the Orinoco river is referred to, contains nearly 220bn barrels. That takes Venezuela 's reserves to 297bn – close to 20% of the world's oil – and leapfrogs it over Saudi Arabia on 265bn.
Although Ramírez has been in his job for almost a decade, he gives all the credit for the country's preeminence in oil to its controversial president, Hugo Chávez . If it hadn't been for the colonel, he says, Venezuela would have surrendered its reserves to multinationals long ago – and the price of oil would be nowhere near its current level.
"If President Chávez had not arrived to power," he says in his Caracas office, "we would be out of Opec, the price of oil would have not recovered, and Venezuelan oil would be in the hands of privates. At the international level, we strengthened Opec and called for a meeting of all its members … We established a fair price and gave unity to the market."

Jam-making
All of which should make Ramírez just as important a figure as the powerful Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, and make the country's state oil company, PDVSA, a force to be reckoned with. But this is Chávez's Venezuela and PDVSA is far more than an oil company. In fact, critics say that its huge diversity of operations – it's involved in health and welfare programmes, importing food, housebuilding and even making jam – means that PDVSA does not have what it takes to capitalise on the bounteous wealth beneath the Orinoco basin.
But Ramírez disagrees. "My greatest satisfaction [after 10 years as minister] is my team. We all come from the left, and I feel great pride in having recovered the industry for all of the Venezuelans," he says. "Before, PDVSA was an oil enclave. It had nothing to do with the rest of the country. I worked at one of its subsidiaries and I quit. I couldn't stand their almighty attitude and their disdain for the people. They referred to themselves as a first-world company within a third-world nation."
Ramírez, 48, was born into a communist family. His father was a well-known guerrillero and Ramírez's surname has led some to suspect that he is related to the notorious Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal (real name Ilich Ramírez), who was also an Andean communist.
He laughs off the link, joking that the name Ramírez is as common as Smith is in Britain, but the trail doesn't end there: one of his vice ministers was Lenin Ramírez, Carlos's brother.

PDVSA's radical transformation came about after Chávez cemented his control of the country following a coup attempt in 2002 and, later that year, a two-month-long strike during which Chávez's opponents cut off the oil supply in an effort to force his resignation.
"We knew something was going to happen. It was not a secret to anyone, so we prepared. If there was another coup, we knew our advantage lay with the oilfield workers, so we went from oilfield to oilfield talking to the workers. The oil sabotage didn't find us in the office, but in the field [with the people]," Ramírez says.
By February 2003, Chávez was firmly in power, and PDVSA changed forever. Close to 20,000 of the 50,000 people who worked there at the time were fired and its private, corporate approach was substituted for what came to be known as "the new PDVSA", run by political ideology more than by market rules or production standards.
Ramírez describes this ruling ideology as national, popular and revolutionary. A very tall man, Ramírez sits in front of a wall lined with paintings of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Chávez and Simón Bolívar, the Latin American figures that have inspired Chavismo, and redefined Venezuela's oil production.
"We are national, because our interest lies in charging what any nation that is in the least bit nationalistic would charge to favour their national interests," he says. "It is popular because we will not turn our backs on the people. And it is revolutionary because we are proposing a development model that is socialist – where we must go against the previous rentist model – where we have taken close to $300bn and invested it in the social areas of the country: literacy, education and food."
But for all the good intentions, eight years of social programmes have taken their toll on the company's core business, resulting in a decline in oil production. And with that comes criticism. Asdrúbal Oliveros, director of Ecoanalítica, a public policy consulting firm, says: "With the old PDVSA, you had an oil policy with no relation to the development policy, but now you have a company that builds houses, buys electricity plants, imports food and even makes jam. In the end, you do wonder if all this must make part of the oil industry. "It became a heavily politicised company that looks more like a ministry of social works, and both extremes are bad."

Sabotage
Ramírez denies that diverting attention to the misiones , as PDVSA's social programmes are called, has affected productivity. He claims it was opposition-led "oil sabotage" that led to the slump in production, and that they have since succeeded in bringing it back to close to 3m barrels a day (about4% of the global total). Measures are under way to ensure it reaches 4m barrels per day (bpd) by 2015, he says.
Depending on whom you talk to, PDVSA's exports range from 2m bpd to 3m bpd. This discrepancy in the numbers reflects one of the company's main problems: that even if its productivity has not decreased, its credibility has.
Francisco Monaldi, an oil expert at Venezuela's IESA business school, says: "Nobody believes in this government. They announce they will invest $150bn in the next six years and investors take it as a token gesture because to date none of these types of announcements have come to fruition."
For all the fear and distrust it inspires, PDVSA has succeeded in signing agreements with close to 20 multinationals to develop La Faja. Nor does Ramirez see a problem with the recent nationalisations of some multinational oil companies' assets in Venezuela. For the new PDVSA it was a matter of reestablishing the country's sovereignty, he says.
"Today, I can tell you that we have total control of our industry and total control over all the oil businesses in our country under a mixed capital scheme. All of the companies that were operating in Venezuela accepted this, except for ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, which left the country." Both of these companies are in a legal battle with PDVSA that could see the latter lose one of its refineries.
Ramírez prefers in any case to look at the big picture and is confident that Venezuela's total reserves will rise to 313bn barrels.
"One thing is oil on site, of which we have 1.3 trillion barrels, and another thing is to be able to extract that oil," he says. "The concept of reserve means that you have the oil and that you have the ability to extract it. With the technology we have, we can extract 20% of that oil … But the US department of geology has said that with our present technology we could actually extract close to 45%. That would be 511bn barrels – or oil for about 140 years."

Virginia Lopez escribe desde Caracas para The Guardian.

Venezuelan Presidential Campain - Leopoldo Lopez

2011-10-22T10:54:00.002-07:00

Very good information about Leopoldo Lopez, from The Economist. Arriba Leopoldo, vas por buen camino

vdebate reporter

http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2011/10/venezuela%E2%80%99s-presidential-campaign?fsrc=nlw%7Cnewe%7C10-21-2011%7Cnew_on_the_economist

Venezuela’s presidential campaign
As clear as MUD
Oct 21st 2011, 12:15 by P.G. CARACAS
LEOPOLDO LÓPEZ is free to seek election in 2012 as Venezuela’s next president. But if elected, he will be barred from taking office. Or maybe not. The government had asked the country’s supreme court for a pronouncement on the “applicability” of a ruling last month by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which overturned an administrative ban on Mr López holding public office. On October 18th the tribunal responded by muddying the waters.
The matter is of more than academic interest. Mr López, the leader of the centre-left People’s Will party, is among the front-runners for the presidential candidacy of the opposition Democratic Unity alliance—known by its initials, somewhat ironically, as the MUD. One recent poll even showed him in the lead. In 2008, when he was on course to become mayor of greater Caracas, he was barred from standing on account of unproven corruption allegations. According to the IACHR that ban, due to last until 2014, was a breach of Venezuela’s international human-rights obligations because it did not arise from a sentence handed down by a court.
That decision produced a strong reaction from Hugo Chávez, the president, who is standing for re-election. He called the IACHR “worthless”. The government condemned what it deemed interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs, saying the ruling would only be applied if the supreme court found it compatible with the Venezuelan constitution—even though IACHR rulings are binding on member states, and the constitution itself, rewritten during Mr Chávez’s presidency, grants precedence to international human-rights treaties.
It was therefore not surprising that the court, which has a record of dancing to the government’s tune, failed to uphold the ruling. The decision, written by justice Arcadio Delgado, accuses the IACHR of acting “as if it were a colonial power” by usurping the role of Venezuela’s own institutions. What did raise eyebrows was the apparent contradiction between Mr Delgado’s reaffirmation that Mr López was “temporarily barred from holding public office” and the opinion expressed by Luisa Estella Morales, the court’s president, at a subsequent press conference. According to Ms Morales, the court will issue a ruling on whether Mr López can take office as president if and only if he wins the election.
In effect, the supreme court is hedging its bets. By leaving open the possibility that the ban might later be overturned, its president may be signaling a willingness to facilitate a transition to a post-Chávez government if necessary. At a time when Mr Chávez was having tests in Cuba to determine whether the cancer operation he underwent in June was successful—he recently declared he is now cancer-free, but one of his former doctors said on October 16th that he probably has no more than two years to live—that speaks volumes about the uncertainty in government ranks over his political future. Suspicious commentators have suggested that the court’s ruling on Mr López might even have been brought forward to distract attention from a news item that seemed certain to weaken the president.
Meanwhile, by leaving the situation unclarified, the court may also have damaged Mr López’s chances of winning the MUD primaries, which are set for February 12th. Many potential voters could be put off by the fear that, if chosen, he would be less likely to win, and that if he won, he might be barred from taking office. Although Mr López himself has insisted he will stay in the race, and rival candidates have publicly supported that position, in private, some opposition members feel he should withdraw in order to minimise the damage to their cause. For the moment, however, he is at least receiving a great deal of free publicity.

Globovision fined millions for its riot reporting

2011-10-21T13:37:00.004-07:00

As Venezuelans we have to defend Globovisión, because we will be defending our rights of Press Freedom, that keep us informed. We don't want the Venezuelan government to close Globovisión, abusing the Venezuelan Justice system, again.

The CPJ Committee to protect journalist (Defending Journalist Worldwide) wrote the following article.....

Globovisión fined millions for its riot reporting

Inmates are subdued after a prison riot in Cabimas, Venezuela. Globovisión was fined more than US$2 million for its coverage of the uprising. (AP)

New York, October 19, 2011 - Venezuela's telecommunications regulator has fined Globovision, the country's last remaining critical network, more than US$2 million for its coverage of deadly prison riots in June and July, news repors said.
The fine stems from Globovisión's coverage of a tense 27-day standoff between government troops and prisoners at the country's El Rodeo II Prison in the city of Guatire, outside the capital, Caracas. The conflict began after troops raided a nearby prison looking for weapons, which set off gunfights that killed at least 22 people, according to news reports.
Pedro Maldonado, director of the National Telecommunications Commission, known as Conatel, told reporters that in Globovisión's televised interviews with relatives of prisoners, which were rebroadcast 269 times, the station violated the law on social responsibility in radio and television that, among other things, sanctions stirring public anxiety. He said the station falsely claimed that members of the National Guard had "massacred" prisoners and that the reporting could have provoked riots in other prisons. He also claimed that Globovisión failed to transmit the government's point of view in a timely manner.
The fine of 9,300,000 bolívares (approximately US$2,164,000) is equal to 7.5 percent of Globovisión's gross income for 2010, according to Maldonado. The director said in a news conference on Tuesday that the fine was the unanimous decision of the 11 members of the body's social responsibility directorate, press reports said.
"Yet again, Venezuela is attempting to silence the television station Globovisión, this time saying the television station's reporting stirred public anxiety," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior coordinator for the Americas. "Venezuelan authorities must end their systematic campaign of harassment against one of the country's only remaining critical media groups and withdraw the fine."
Globovisión president Guillermo Zuloaga, who is living in exile, said the station would go before the Venezuelan courts to appeal the decision, which he called "grotesque and absurd," the network said. But under Venezuelan law, the fine cannot be deferred until a final court decision is handed down, and Maldonado said the fine must be paid by December 31.
Ricardo Antela, a Globovisión legal adviser, told CPJ that the station did its best to report an important story under extremely difficult circumstances. He said the station's reporters were forced to cover the story from outside a security cordon more than half a mile away from the prison. He also said the government made no official declaration until six days after the riots began and that government officials refused to speak to Globovisión about the crisis.
Globovisión Vice President María Fernanda Flores told reporters that the fine could bankrupt the station, which receives no government advertising. But she also vowed to continue transmitting the news. "There is no way to pay that much money," she said in an interview broadcast by the station. "We will continue to inform the public. We have never censored ourselves and we are not going to. We are not scared," she said.
However, Antela said, if Globovisión does not pay the fine, the state could seize Globovisión's bank accounts, making it impossible to pay employees and suppliers, and effectively shut down the station. He also said that eight of the 11 members of Conatel's social responsibility directorate were government appointees and added that the fine was an attempt to silence a critical voice. He said there was little hope of winning an appeal before the pro-government Venezuelan courts but said the station would take the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Globovisión, a 24-hour news station, has frequently sparred with President Hugo Chávez and his administration, of whom it has been highly critical. In August 2009, a group of more than 30 armed pro-government militants riding motorcycles stormed the network's premises and set off tear gas. Earlier that year, Venezuelan regulators opened five administrative proceedings against the broadcaster on similar charges.
Globovisión is the only network critical of Chávez that is still on the air. Another opposition station, RCTV, was forced off cable and satellite TV in 2010 after its broadcast license was revoked in 2007.

http://www.cpj.org/2011/10/globovision-fined-millions-for-reporting-on-prison.php

Disrespect for the life of the less equal

2011-10-19T05:01:00.004-07:00

God is big........ Please help us to live in the Venezuela that helps the Venezuelans, no the one that abuse them.Vdebate Reporter

VenEconomia Oct.18, 2011
Disrespect for the life of the less equal
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a series of recommendations for reversing the deviations revealed by the Universal Periodic Review to which the Venezuelan Government was subjected.
The Venezuelan delegation rejected some 38 recommendations made by the Council outright, mainly those referring to the freedom of speech, the Independence of the judicial system, and a reform of the prison system in order to ensure compliance with the minimum standard established by the United Nations when it comes to the treatment of inmates.
This failure to accept certain recommendations is totally in line with the violations of the human rights of more than two dozen Venezuelans who, today, are in prison for different political reasons.
The cynicism and the cruel treatment meted out to these prisoners of the government are beyond belief.
One of these cases is that of the judge María de Lourdes Afiuni, who suffered delays in receiving medical treatment for a breast cyst and hemorrhaging, which could have had unpredictable consequences for her health.
Venezuelan “justice” has proved to be equally inhumane in the cases of former Police Chiefs Iván Simonovis, Henry Vivas, and Lázaro Forero. The health of all three has been severely undermined as a result in delays in providing them with medical treatment.
Even more inhumane is the treatment being meted out to the Metropolitan Police officers who are also serving unjust prison sentences for the events of April 2002. Today, one of those officers, Sergeant Julio Rodríguez, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but too late in the day as it had already spread to his lymphatic system; and the government still refuses to authorize his release on humanitarian grounds so that he can be treated at home.
Could it be that these Venezuelans less equal than the President, who has at his disposal the very latest medical advances for treating the cancer from which is suffering?

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is a Sick Man

2011-10-16T12:00:00.004-07:00

Agree 100% with this article of Jerry Brewer vdebate reporter

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is a Sick Man
By: Jerry Brewer
President Hugo Chavez’s physical and mental health transcends a myriad of opinions and judgment.Chavez’s ever-growing and strong political opposition stands firm in awaiting what many believe is the end of his socialist version of the Bolivarian Revolution, either by election defeat or he succumbing to his critical physical illness.
Chavez pompously says he will be president through the year 2030.To a man who adores his own “one-way freedom” with the media, he closely guards his medical condition; waffling from just needing one treatment of chemotherapy; and sequentially now reaching his fourth recently conducted again in Cuba.
Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales went there to be at the side of his socialist mentor. Morales left Cuba to speak at the United Nations last week- assuming Chavez’s usual anti-US and Israel diatribe. Trying to defend world accusations of his regime’s complicity in drug trafficking and terrorism, he chose to blame the US for rumor-mongering. A pretty heady position by a rogue leftist leader who“kicked”the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) out of Bolivia; following the lead of Chavez who did the same. The region’s drug activity for both nations is very well known to a free world’s acute focus on the truth. How can any savvy, sane and inquisitive, person believe Chavez and Morale’s pathological nonsense? Adjoining Latin American neighbors are not fooled.
Morales is now having his own problems at home with the indigenous Bolivian people violently oppressed while trying to assemble peacefully in disagreement with the government.
Let’s face the fact that Hugo Chavez is Venezuela’s master of lies and thus must keep his regime constantly censoring the media. His one-way media output constantly reflects his physical and mentalfitness, as well as his frequent sound-byte attacks on the US (capitalism and imperialism). This, muchlike the father of lies- Fidel Castro’s lengthy absence from the public eye for around four years. Fidel Castro later would emerge and truthfully state that he was near death.Chavez frequently goes to extreme measures to censor Venezuela media- especially after the Christian Science Monitor exposed and published the steady stream of wealthy Venezuelans abandoning theirformer beloved homeland for Panama. Too, it was reported that Chavez’s top military leaders were involved in contingency plans on a move to Panama- this via one of “Panama’s top real estate developers.” The pathological nature of Chavez’s words and tenure in office as Venezuela’s rogue leftist leader, isgraphically and factually demonstrated by the embarrassment of slim victory for majority rule in the 2010 parliamentary election in Venezuela on September 26, 2010.This sparked a tirade of Chavez anger that led to his usual non-stately and crude political demeanor of confrontation. He quickly embarked on travel to meet with his mentor and revolutionary partner Fidel Castro in Cuba, as well as to the embracing arms of Iran’s Ahmadinejad. Too, his stops did not forget his pals in Russia, Syria, and others.
Chavez recently continued to exhibit his flawed and ill propensities to embarrass a once proud and prosperous democratic populace in Venezuela, by “solidarity wishes to Libya’s“on the run”PresidentMuammar Gaddafi and Syria’s embattled President Bashar-al-Assad whose regime is hunting down and killing street protesters. Chavez, as usual, blames this on“Yankee aggression- allowing his flawed mental capacities to ignore a majority world support of those people of those actions wishing to be free of oppression and lies by their rogue leftist dictators.Chavez’s mental illness, whether temporary or not, also does not allow him to see that the people on thestreets in protest against the murdering regimes of Libya and Syria are their own people in masses.
What part of that does Chavez or his own supporters miss? All they have to do is use the free world media for the facts, and not his own personal blog (Twitter) that spews his tired rhetoric of falsehood and subterfuge. He goes by the name of “Chavez Candanga (literally-“the devil”).”
Now there is acurious mentor for him also.The squandering (and the simple disappearance) of billions of dollars in hard earned oil revenue forVenezuela’s citizens, is Chavez’s rationale to deceive a very savvy (but violently oppressed) Venezuelan people into believing Venezuela is to be invaded by the “Yankees.”
This allows him to buy and hoard massive weapons and issue blank checks to leftist regimes throughout the world that care not one iota for the true welfare of the Venezuelan people. Only Chavez garners the accolades for“his”generosity and personal support of murdering world dictator-like regimes.
The truth is that the world has previously seen leftist leaders and regimes telegraph their true intention sthrough their anger and arrogance while consolidating power. Those acts routinely weaken democratic institutions, and trample on the guarantees of human rights. In the absence of a credible judicial control in Venezuela, the Chavez government has implemented “systematically discriminatory policies that have limited the exercise of freedom of expression of journalists, the right to freedom of association for workers and the civil society capacity to promote human rights in Venezuela. The Chavez government has implemented discriminatory practices against its political opponents and critics.
At times, the president himself has openly endorsed acts of discrimination.”Chavez has further defined his sinister agenda through a manifest disregard of the principle of separation of powers and, especially, the idea of an independent judiciary that is “indispensable for protecting fundamental rights in a democratic society.”
What more proof is necessary? It came with the political take over of the Supreme Court by Chávez and his regime.The people of Venezuela, both supporters and non-supporters of Hugo Chavez, urgently need to implement surgical-like fact finding- the search for the truth and facts from a “world”media. In this manner, they can be sure that they did their own homework; used their own God-given minds; and made the right decisions for their future and families. With a factual search for the truth- a free world believes they will say“Nunca mas,”to Hugo Chavez, or any similar leader of destruction and misery.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATES United States of America—Jerry Brewer is C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates (northern Virginia), a global risk mitigation firm.
Website is located at http://www.cjiausa.org/.
mailto:jbrewer@cjiausa.org
TWITTER:cjiausa
Media archives:www.scribd.com/jbrewer31 and http://mexidata.info/

Violence and Politics in Venezuela

2011-09-21T22:31:00.002-07:00

I use to invite foreigners to go to Venezuela, no anymore..... too much crime

vdebate reporter

Violence and Politics in Venezuela
Latin America Report N°38 17 Aug 2011

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Every half hour, a person is killed in Venezuela. The presence of organised crime combined with an enormous number of firearms in civilian hands and impunity, as well as police corruption and brutality, have entrenched violence in society. While such problems did not begin with President Hugo Chávez, his government has to account for its ambiguity towards various armed groups, its inability or unwillingness to tackle corruption and criminal complicity in parts of the security forces, its policy to arm civilians “in defence of the revolution”, and – last but not least – the president’s own confrontational rhetoric. Positive steps such as constructive engagement with Colombia as well as some limited security reform do not compensate for these failures. While the prospect of presidential elections in 2012 could postpone social explosion, the deterioration of the president’s health has added considerable uncertainty. In any event, the degree of polarisation and militarisation in society is likely to undermine the chances for either a non-violent continuation of the current regime or a peaceful transition to a post-Chávez era.
A significant part of the problem was inherited from previous administrations. In 1999, the incoming President Chávez was faced with a country in which homicide rates had tripled in less than two decades, and many institutions were in the process of collapse, eroded by corruption and impunity. During the “Bolivarian revolution”, however, these problems have become substantially worse. Today, more than ten people are murdered on the streets of Caracas every day – the majority by individual criminals, members of street gangs or the police themselves – while kidnapping and robbery rates are soaring. By attributing the problem to “social perceptions of insecurity”, or structural causes, such as widespread poverty, inherited from past governments, the government is downplaying the magnitude and destructive extent of criminal violence. The massive, but temporary, deployment of security forces in highly visible operations, and even police reform and disarmament programs, will have little impact if they are not part of an integrated strategy to reduce crime, end impunity and protect citizens.
The presence of international organised crime groups is also nothing new, but there is evidence of increased activity during the past decade that in turn has contributed not only to the rise in homicides, kidnappings and extortion rates, but also to a growth in micro drug trafficking, making poor and urban neighbourhoods more violent. Venezuela has become a major drug trafficking corridor, and different groups, including Colombian guerrillas, paramilitaries and their successors, have been joined by mafia gangs from Mexico and elsewhere in benefiting from widespread corruption and complicity on the part of security forces, some of it seemingly tolerated by individuals in the highest spheres of government.
The government has displayed a particular ambiguity toward non-state armed groups that sympathise with its political project. Urban “colectivos” combining political and criminal activities, including armed actions against opposition targets, operate largely unchallenged and with broad impunity. The Bolivarian Liberation Forces have established control over parts of the border with Colombia, while the FARC and ELN guerrillas from the other side have long found shelter and aid on Venezuelan soil. In the context of the rapprochement between Presidents Chávez and Santos, the cost-benefit ratio behind the unacknowledged alliance between Colombian guerrillas and the Venezuelan government appears to have changed. However, it is still too early to be certain whether the government is willing and able to translate positive commitments and some initial promising steps into effective, sustainable action against such groups.
Violence and corruption have been facilitated by a steady process of institutional erosion that has become particularly manifest in the justice system and the security forces. While impunity levels soar, highly dysfunctional and abusive police have endangered citizen security. Heavily politicised, the armed forces are increasingly seen as part of the problem, enmeshed with organised crime and pressed by the president to commit themselves to the partisan defence of his “revolution”. The creation, arming and training of pro-governmental militias further increase the danger that political differences may ultimately be settled outside the constitutional framework, through deadly force.
In this highly charged environment, political violence has so far remained more a latent threat than a reality. However, as the country heads into what promises to be a fiercely contested presidential election, with very high stakes for both sides, this fragile equilibrium may not hold. Moreover, uncertainties provoked by the president’s illness have compounded short- and medium-term prospects. The greatest danger is likely to come after the election, regardless of who wins, since the entrenched levels of violence are prone to undermine either peaceful regime continuity, hand-over to a successor or any transitional arrangement. Moreover, whatever the political complexion of a future government, the extensive presence of organised crime networks is likely to seriously threaten medium- and long-term stability. The necessary actions to avoid that scenario must begin with a commitment by all sides to peaceful constitutional means of conflict resolution and with effective government measures to disarm and dismantle criminal structures, restore the rule of law and root out corruption in state institutions.

Bogotá/Brussels, 17 August 2011

HRF Welcomes IA Court HR Ruling on Case of Lopez Mendoza

2011-09-20T05:54:00.002-07:00

HRF Welcomes IACourtHR Ruling on Case of López Mendoza, Asks Venezuela to Comply

NEW YORK (September 19, 2011) – The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) welcomes the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACourtHR ) ruling in the case of López Mendoza v. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The ruling, published Friday in Spanish, determined that the disqualification of opposition politician López Mendoza violated his political rights under Article 23 of the American Convention on Human Rights. The IACourtHR also asked Venezuela to lift Lopez Mendoza’s disqualification.

This decision confirms that the only way to impose sanctions that ban a person from standing for election or holding public office, is through criminal conviction, and not through administrative or judicial interim decisions.

"The Court’s ruling makes this a landmark case for the entire region, as it affects not only Venezuela, but countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Peru—all of which allow restrictions on political rights that fall below the criminal conviction standard," said Javier El-Hage, general counsel of HRF.

On February 25, HRF filed an amicus curiae brief with the IACourtHR and asked the Court to ratify the standard set in Article 23 of the Convention, under which the state may deprive a person of their political rights only after that individual is convicted as the result of a criminal trial according to due process. In 2008, with no court sentence and under charges of corruption, López Mendoza was banned from running in any election in Venezuela for the next six years.

In 2008, polls predicted López Mendoza as a favorite to win election to the office of mayor of Caracas. Today, López Mendoza is a possible candidate for the 2012 presidential elections, and hopes to stand in the primary elections that will be convened by “La Mesa de la Unidad,” a coalition of political parties that oppose President Hugo Chávez.

In June of 1981, the Venezuelan state recognized the jurisdiction of the IACourtHR, thus rendering its rulings are binding in that country. “Given that López seeks to enter the presidential race, if Venezuela does not comply with the ruling, then the 2012 presidential elections can hardly be considered fair, according to the international minimum standard for elections," concluded El-Hage.

HRF is a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that protects and promotes human rights globally, with an expertise in the Americas. We believe that all human beings are entitled to freedom of self-determination, freedom from tyranny, the rights to speak freely, to associate with those of like mind, and to leave and enter their countries. Individuals in a free society must be accorded equal treatment and due process under law, and must have the opportunity to participate in the governments of their countries; HRF’s ideals likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience. HRF does not support nor condone violence. HRF’s International Council includes former prisoners of conscience Vladimir Bukovsky, Palden Gyatso, Václav Havel, Mutabar Tadjibaeva, Ramón J. Velásquez, Elie Wiesel, and Harry Wu.

Contact: Pedro Pizano, pedro@thehrf.org, Office: +1 (212) 246.8486

Read the March 1 release “HRF Files Amicus Brief with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; Court’s Decision Could Set Precedent for Protecting Political Rights” here.

Read the amicus brief filed by HRF with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights here.

To learn more about López Mendoza’s case, watch his speech at HRF’s annual conference, the Oslo Freedom Forum

The denial of medical treatment as a tool of torture in Venezuela

2011-07-12T16:38:00.004-07:00

The following article was published in “La Razón”, a Venezuelan weekly newspaper of national circulation, on 14 June 2011. It has become even more relevant in light of the surgery and complementary treatment President Chávez has received in Cuba in order to cure his own cancer. (Comment and translation into English by Enrique ter Horst).

The denial of medical treatment as a tool of torture in Venezuela.
By Tamara Suju Roa
A number of unjustly imprisoned Venezuelans – political prisoners - have had recourse to public scandal and international protection mechanisms, hunger strikes and other forms of protest in order to secure permission from the Venezuelan state to receive urgently needed medical treatment. The cases that come to mind immediately are the ones’ of Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni, whose bleeding was allowed to continue for months before she was permitted to have the hysterectomy she needed, as well as the case of Wiiliam Saud, operated for four heart bypasses and treated for skin cancer only after the peaceful protests by the students of Operacion Libertad pressured the government to relent and allow the operation.
The right to health, however, is consecrated in article 83 of the Constitution of Venezuela as part of the right to life and as an obligation of the state, but its arbitrary and systematic denial to those unjustly imprisoned for political reasons clearly constitutes a form of torture. To deny medical attention to someone already psychologically weakened by arbitrary detention, as well as entirely dependent on the whim of those in power, is certainly a form of cruelty. One must imagine someone in such a situation, closed-in between four walls, fearing that treatment quite probably will be denied on purpose, his or her family fearing that the perversion of the power of the state can lead to his death and only able to scream to the world the outrage he or she is being subjected to. That is, if the scream can be heard beyond the prison walls.

The Government of Venezuela not only violates Venezuelan laws ordaining the protection of the right to life and health, but all international conventions and treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, and I dare also include the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Demeaning Treatment or Punishment, as the concept of torture included therein is applicable to the treatment Venezuelan political prisoners are subjected to.

Indeed, according to this Convention, by “torture” shall be understood “…any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity….” (Article 1).

I ask the reader if under this concept the denial by the Venezuelan state to allow Alejandro Peña Esclusa, imprisoned in the dungeons of the SEBIN, the political police, to be treated for his prostate cancer is not torture, in addition to cruel and inhuman treatment? Let us recall that a month before his detention Peña Esclusa was operated for a radical prostatectomy and could not receive the necessary radio therapy for the complete eradication of his illness, and has suffered a relapse of the cancer. In order to benefit from this therapy Peña Esclusa requires a judicial authorization to receive such treatment in an aseptic environment only available in an appropriate health center, a measure of surveilled liberty for humanitarian reasons foreseen in the Criminal Procedure Code and which an independent judge would accord as a matter of routine but which now is arbitrarily denied to him. Is the government waiting for his cancer to methastasize?

Police Commissioner Lázaro Forero urgently requires medical examination to determine the extent of his prostate enlargement and treatment for posible glaucoma. Metropolitan Police Officer Erasmo Bolívar requires to be operated on a knee and to be treated on his left eye after having been operated on his retina. Rolando Guevara suffers from a lumbocyatic hernia since August 2007 (diagnosed by doctors of the SEBIN and the Investigative Police) which has not been treated, and Jose Sanchez suffers from cronic gastritis and severe lumbago and needs rehabilitation treatment.

The government, in particular the Minister of the Interior and Justice, is in full knowledge of all of the above, as the provision of medical attention to the political prisoners mentioned by name are part of the agreement the government reached with the students of the so called Operación Libertad protest organized in front of the OAS office in Caracas. The Venezuelan State is the custodian of each of these prisoners of the Venezuelan “justice” system and is therefore responsible, by action and/or omission, of what might happen to them. These particular cases entail a special responsibility for the government, as in spite of its knowledge of their situation it denies them the right to health.

Chávez Illness Sparks Succession Talk

2011-06-24T00:12:00.002-07:00

Chávez Illness Sparks Succession Talk - WSJ

By JOSé DE CóRDOBA in Mexico City and KEJAL VYAS in Caracas

Venezuelan officials scrambled Thursday to reassure compatriots that President Hugo Chávez was not seriously ill after his brother said the president would remain in a Cuban hospital for up to 12 more days, making it likely that Mr. Chávez will be away from the country for nearly a month.
The absence has sparked furious speculation about the president's health and led many in Venezuela to ask: What happens if the former army officer who has ruled Venezuela for 12 years is suddenly incapacitated or even dies?
"Nothing will ever be the same," said Juan Carlos Zapata, a political analyst in Caracas. "This is the first signal that Chávez has an end and that there is nobody to take over. He might come back, but nothing will be the same."
Wednesday night, Mr. Chávez's brother Adan said he had just returned from Havana where Mr. Chávez was "satisfactorily" recuperating from an emergency operation on June 10 to treat a pelvic absess, a pus-filled cavity that can result from injury or infection.
Speculation coming from Cuba and Venezuela has focused on the possibility that Mr. Chávez has prostrate cancer, and has had his prostrate removed. A senior Venezuelan official didn't respond to emailed questions about the speculation.
Mr. Chávez's return to Caracas could take place in 10 or 12 days, his brother said on a television program. Venezuela's Defense Minister Gen. Carlos Mata Figueroa said Thursday that Mr. Chávez was "stronger than ever," and would be back "soon."
Under Venezuela's constitution, Vice President Elias Jaua would take the helm if Mr. Chávez is incapacitated. But whether he could remain in power long enough to preside over presidential elections scheduled for December 2012 is open to question, analysts say.
A populist caudillo—or strongman—whose rule rests on the personal and emotional tie he has developed with many poor Venezuelans, Mr. Chávez has no natural successor, analysts say.
"Chávismo without Chávez is not possible," said Alberto Barrera, a co-author of a biography of Mr. Chávez. "Chávez, who is a great showman, is the emotion through which the people connect to power."
Like many caudillos, Mr. Chávez has built a cult of personality, and dominates the country's airwaves, speaking on television and radio for hours at a time. His visage is plastered on billboards across the country.
Polls show other Chávez supporters are unknown or unliked by most Venezuelans, said Daniel Kerner, a Latin America analyst at the Eurasia Group. "Chávez has made it difficult for anyone to rise to that level where they can be seen as a replacement."
Many analysts say that neither Mr. Jaua nor other top Chávez officials have any of the president's charisma, which is the glue the president has used to build a following.
Mr. Chávez's exit from the political scene would no doubt lead to a fierce succession struggle among leading members of his movement. Mr. Jaua, who analysts say comes from the most leftist branch of Mr. Chávez's movement and has close ties to Cuba, could be challenged by other powerful Chávez followers such as Diosdado Cabello, a former soldier now a powerful congressman who controls much of the political apparatus of Mr. Chávez's socialist party.
Rafael Ramírez, the head of the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, the oil-rich's country piggy bank, is seen by analysts as another would-be contender for power, as is Mr. Chávez's brother Adan.
If Mr. Chávez were to be incapacitated, Cuba's crack security services might play a key role, analysts say. Mr. Chávez, who considers himself to be Fidel Castro's spiritual heir, provides Cuba with up to 100,000 barrels a day of cut-rate oil, making the island's economic survival largely dependent on Mr. Chávez's largess.
"The two Castro brothers, who were Catholics once, must be burning a lot of candles, praying for Chávez's survival," says Riordan Roett, head of Latin American studies at John Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Venezuela's military would also play a crucial role. Much of the military has benefited from perks and money-making opportunities provided by Mr. Chávez. But there is resentment among some officers of Cuban influence in the armed forces, and fear that civilian militias armed by Mr. Chávez pose a threat to the institution and the country.
"These political vacuums are very dangerous. There will be a fight," Mr. Roett said. "There will be military moves. There will be moves among the Bolivarian factions."
Some analysts believe that Mr. Chávez, a master of the grand political gesture, is only biding his time to make a triumphal comeback from Cuba, as if from the dead. Such a return, they believe, could help overpower his political opposition.
The former tank commander-turned president still commands the loyalty of about half of his countrymen. But many Venezuelans have become frustrated by the country's surging criminal violence, its spluttering electrical system, as well as the highest inflation rate in the world.
One key date for Chávez watchers: July 5th, when Mr. Chávez is expected to host a spectacular and long-planned regional summit marking the 200th anniversary of Venezuelan independence July 5th.
But the longer time goes on without specific news on Mr. Chávez's situation, the more anxiety grows. "I'm hearing so many rumors now, I don't know what to believe," said Manuel Acosta, a 47-year-old taxi driver.
"Of course you don't want to wish ill upon anyone but if there is a change in the leaders, we can hope that things will start to change for the better."

Venezuela rated the worst performer in accountability - World Justice Project

2011-06-15T20:23:00.003-07:00

According to the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index - Venezuela rated the worst performer in accountability

The Rule of Law Index was prepared by the World Justice Project -an organization partly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (created by computer entrepreneur Bill Gates) that regularly reviews compliance with the rule of law and access to independent justice in the world Transparency
Venezuela is viewed as the worst government in the world in accountability and effective checks by its citizens, according to the Rule of Law Index -an annual survey on rule of law around the world released on Monday by the World Justice Project, a US institution.
Venezuela is "the worst performer in the world in accountability and effective checks on the executive power," said the report entitled Rule of Law Index around the World prepared by the World Justice Project, AFP reported.
In Venezuela "corruption is widespread (ranking 54 out of 61 countries), crime and violence are common (ranking 64), government institutions are not transparent and the judiciary system is ineffective and subject to political influence (ranks last, 66.)".
"Venezuela ranks relatively well in terms of religious freedom (ranking 15th), accessibility of the civil courts (ranking 21st), and protection of labor rights (ranking 27th).
"The country also displays serious flaws in guaranteeing respect for fundamental rights, in particular, freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to privacy," the text added.

Spain betrays Cuba's dissidents

2011-06-15T20:13:00.005-07:00

Spain Betrays Cuba's Dissidents
President José Zapatero helped Castro get rid of the best leaders of the island's nascent democracy movement. JUNE 13, 2011

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Madrid
Despite 21% unemployment and a looming debt crisis, Spain is still considered one of the world's great travel destinations. That is unless you are a Cuban prisoner of conscience who was deported and dumped here by the military dictatorship in Havana. In that case, life as an alien on the sunny Iberian Peninsula is economically and psychologically grim.
Over the past 11 months, the Cuban regime has abruptly removed 115 political prisoners from their jail cells and banished them to Spain, calling their exile "liberation." Many of them are part of a group known as "the 75," who were arrested in March 2003 for activities like collecting signatures on a democracy petition, leading peaceful marches, or writing for independent newspapers. They were permitted to leave with their immediate families and bring one change of clothes from Cuba, but they were not given the chance to say goodbye to friends and extended family and were issued no papers. A number of them have tried to claim political-refugee status, but the Spanish government has not been eager to grant it. As a result, many of them still have no permanent documents.
Last week I met with 10 of them here. Their stories of years in Cuba's dungeons and of the wider repression across the island are hair-raising. One of them showed me smuggled photos from inside the notorious Combinado del Este prison, a filthy, infested facility not fit for animals. Some prisoners of conscience have spent years there.
Cuban dissidents rally outside the Cuban Embassy in Madrid on Feb 26, the anniversary of the death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
After three days of these interviews, I began to slump under the weight of the Cuban reality. But the cloud that darkened my spirit was not brought on by anything these patriots had revealed about the hell-hole known as Cuba. I am well-versed in Castro's human rights record. The truly distressing part of the prisoners' stories is the morally bankrupt role played by the Socialist government of Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in assisting the Cuban dictatorship to disguise the deportation as "liberation." It's what one might expect from the bosses in Burma, North Korea or Iran.
The harsh prison conditions in Cuba are legendary, though the regime has not allowed any human rights observer to have a look in more than two decades. One of the exiles told me about a punishment technique called "the crab," which he said is used on common criminals but one human rights activist in the U.S. told me is also used on political prisoners. One handcuff is put on one wrist and the other handcuff is put on the opposite ankle. Another set of handcuffs is put on the other wrist and ankle. Then the prisoner, wearing only underwear, is tossed onto the floor of a dank cell where he may remain for a day or more. Beatings, solitary confinement and harassment of family members at home are also common practices.
This kind of stuff is supposed to curb dissent but after seven years of grisly prison life, many of "the 75," a number of whom were serving sentences of more than two decades, showed no signs of cracking. Orlando Zapata Tamayo went on a hunger strike and died at the hands of the regime in February 2010. The beatings by Castro thugs of the Ladies in White—the wives, sisters and mothers of the political prisoners—were captured on cellphones and went viral on the Web. Another hunger-striking dissident, Guillermo Farinas, was gravely ill.
"The 75" had become a huge public-relations problem for the regime. As governments and intellectuals around the world condemned the systematic brutality, it was clear that more than a half-century of Cuban propaganda promoting the socialist paradise image was in danger of going down the drain. To minimize the damage, the regime needed not only to get the prisoners out of the country under the headline of "liberation," but also to ensure that they would land in oblivion. Spain agreed to help, and why not? Then-Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos has a warm relationship with the Castro government and was a frequent VIP guest on the island.
Most of the former prisoners told me that they did not want to leave Cuba, but Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who acted as a go-between for the dictatorship, pressured them and their families. Family members, worried that their loved ones might die in prison, asked them to take the Spanish exit.
Once in Spain, they realized they'd been had. They were clearly political refugees, and under Spanish law they were entitled to claim that designation. But for Spain to admit that they were victims of political persecution would negate the whole point of the exercise, which was to paint Castro as a great humanitarian who had set them free. This is why many of those I spoke with remain in legal limbo.
The transition to democracy in Cuba depends on two things: New leaders at home and international solidarity with their struggle for liberty from abroad. Mr. Zapatero has betrayed the Cuban people on both fronts.

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com

Elections en Peru - June 5 2011

2011-06-04T16:09:00.005-07:00

After we have suffered Hugo Chavez, and he had changed so much Venezuela, for bad unfortunately, I have to go with Keiko.

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2011/06/really-it-has-become-no-brainer-keiko.html

Really, it has become a no brainer: Keiko for Peru's president
The Peruvian second round tomorrow has drawn so much ink (and even some blood) that one would expect a distant observer to pull his hairs in agony at how come a country has reached such lows. But if indeed the lows have been reached, surprisingly at the end the choice of lesser evil has turned out to be simpler than expected.
I am not going to rehash what has been rehashed hundreds of times, about Humala coup mongering past or Keiko tainted associations. After all, if Vargas Llosa has been willing to make a fool of himself repeatedly on that matter there is no need for others to follow in his path.What has been the clincher for me where the interviews granted on the same day to Patricia Janiot of CÑÑ by both candidate.
I watched them last night. I did not like any of the two but it was very, very clear that Keiko Fujimori has a better grasp of issues, a more consistent and coherent thought process, and a better body language than Humala, no question about that.And if I add some cynicism, whatever system Keiko Fujimoro might be secretly planning we already know how to get out of it with minimum damage and a functioning economy.
Ollanta Humala system will eventually be even worse than the one of Chavez because the guy is clearly less able than Chavez to emotionally control the forces that his tenure will undoubtedly try to unleash. In a country without the constant oil spigot of Venezuela to smooth over the major mistakes, Ollanta Humala is a sure road to misery, a return to some of the old Velasco Alvarado era knee jerk reflexes, and a higher potential for civil war than Keiko, who, let's not forget it, cannot introduce the racial card to her politics the way a Chavez did or an Humala surely will do.In other words, Peru could survive better a Keiko stint than an Ollanta stint and this is enough reason to vote for Keiko Fujimori.
Let's hope that enough people in Peru understand that while they hold their nose and vote.

Danger - Venezuela - Iran

2011-06-01T18:48:00.003-07:00

If this is true Chavez sold our pretty Venezuela to Iran? How long venezuelans have to deal with this criminal?

Danger / Michael Rowan
PDVSA will be penalized for ignoring UN and US sanctions against strategic materials traded with Iran, which could complicate business in the US via CITGO
Opinion

If the news in the mainstream Western press is right, Venezuela is preparing for a surprise attack against the USA. The German newspaper Die Welt reports that missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons have been installed on the Paraguana peninsula, where the missile-infrastructure 20 meters below ground and the no-fly Venezuelan air space above them are controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. While some Venezuelan military and their Cuban masters may be furious about this Venezuelan surrender of sovereignty to a foreign power - ironic in the Cuban case - the missile operation continues while being officially denied by the government.One SHAHAB missile costs the equivalent of hundreds of houses promised to the poor, who number over 10 million in the country according to government estimates and 15 million according to independent sources. As opposed to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when Fidel Castro invited the Soviet Union to station missiles in Cuba, Chavez may be purchasing the Iranian missiles secretly under the cover of dozens of opaque Iranian-Venezuelan deals dating from 2006 and worth up to $20 billion. Those deals have stimulated ongoing foreign investigations of uranium mining, shipments of sanctioned arms and nuclear weapons materials, terrorist training camps, cocaine and slave trafficking, and the money-laundering that pays for it all.The dots are being connected. PDVSA will be penalized for ignoring UN and US sanctions against strategic materials traded with Iran, which could complicate business in the US via CITGO, thus threatening oil sales which account for 95% of Venezuela's export earnings. Chavez's characterization of all these reports as lies concocted by his enemies rings as hollow as the insistence by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief, that his sexual encounter with a maid in a New York hotel was not rape but consensual. Speaking of consensual, one wonders if Chavez's military alliance with Iran is consensual - with the Venezuelan electorate. It's hard to imagine voters would willingly put the country at risk of losing everything out of solidarity with Iran.

michaelrowan22@gmail.com

Makled Inc

2011-06-01T18:36:00.006-07:00

After I saw La Reina del Sur (The Queen of South) - a soup opera from Telemundo, and its success related with drugs mafia, I think the Makled Inc case could also be a soup opera, or maybe a movie. It would be a bad propaganda for Hugo Chavez.

Makled Inc.
As many other companies of renowned alleged drug kingpin Walid Makled, Aeropostal went to the hands of the Venezuelan State at the end of 2008

Makled's case
There is no way to have a look at the case file of Venezuelan Aeropostal airlines. "It is in custody." It is like saying that this folder cannot be touched.

As many other companies of renowned alleged drug kingpin Walid Makled, Aeropostal went to the hands of the Venezuelan State at the end of 2008. The Venezuelan government seized this and other goods shortly after finding almost four tons of cocaine in a farm rented by the Makled family in Tocuyito, central Carabobo state. Since then, all that is known about the destination of the property of Makled and his brothers is that it went to the Venezuelan government.

Even in public files of Venezuelan registry offices, everything related to Makled is "in custody." There is no interest to air the details of each of his companies. Perhaps because some of them not even are in his name. Businessman Nelson Ramiz warned against it in a motion for appeal brought on May 16, 2008 at the judicial circuit in Caracas metropolitan area.

Ramiz attested to this situation several months before Makled was prosecuted for the crimes of paid assassination, drug trafficking and money laundering. And he was adamant in his statement now from Miami, on the other side of the phone. "Checks bounced; the sale of Aeropostal was a swindle."

Pleased to meet you, my name is Walid

First time they met, it was a businessman-to-businessman cordial talk. Makled called Ramiz to express his interest in the airline.

The stoppage in December 2007 made Aeropostal's troubles come to the surface. It lasted a few hours. However, the event unleashed another, protracted strike organized not by in-house staff, but by the Venezuelan National Civil Aviation Institute. The board would stop selling tickets in Christmas time as long as the company would make its situation formal.

This is what Ramiz calls "bullfighter's sword thrust." He is positive that they had their eyes on the company. Before spending the corporate reserves, in 2008 a buyer showed up, promising to soothe the headache. He was Walid Makled.

He introduced himself as a concessionaire of Valencia airport and several warehouses at the dock of Puerto Cabello. Everything was apparently running smoothly. Nevertheless, before anybody could object to the sale of the airline, Ramiz warned that two things were needed: "Money and political liaisons." Got it! The seller gave the green light. Apparently the buyer was in possession of the two cards

Some weeks later, Ramiz was signing in New York a conditioned sale agreement in installments together with Basel Makled. Nowadays, the latter shares some of his brother's charges. However, the three million US dollars checks which ensured the key of Aeropostal's offices bounced in the United States. The checks, previously signed in Venezuela by Walid, were bad checks.

"Then, they would tell me that they were having cash flow troubles," Ramiz recalled. "I went to Venezuela, visited Aeropostal's offices at Torre Polar. However, some agents of Carabobo state police would not let me in to speak to Makled."

In this way, the impasse went to the court. Ramiz filed a complaint for fraud at the Public Prosecutor Office and, later on, he filed a motion for appeal against Caracas Fifth Commercial Registry Office.

"They recorded the sale with forged documents. I personally appeared at the Registry Office, but they did not let me do anything."

A washing machine, but not for laundry
"In order to expand their business and legitimize the funds from their operations in Carabobo, they went in quest of a vehicle for them to have clout inside and outside Venezuela and freely move their shipments," reported daily newspaper Reporte in its edition of May 27.

The full-color front page aimed at Makled: "Aeropostal... another chapter of the Syrian Sopranos."

"They have turned Aeropostal into a washing machine, not precisely of dirty clothes," the newspaper admonished on May 27 in an article signed by Luis López/CJ.

jpoliszuk@eluniversal.com

Translated by Conchita Delgado

Venezuela Electrical Crisis

2011-06-01T18:27:00.002-07:00

Chavez brought his incompetence to govern Venezuela. We didn't have this problem before since 1960-1997.

We were happier then, and we didn’t know.

Venezuela's provinces are sacrificed for the sake of Caracas
A power-rationing program has saved the Venezuelan capital city from outages, but hits most of the province. The Planta Centro complex, one of Latin America's largest thermal power plants, is also working at full capacity

Only one of the three Tacoa power generation units is operating

Energy The Ministry of Electricity and the National Electrical Corporation (Corpoelec) reported on Tuesday on the implementation of a power-rationing program in most of the country. The step was taken due to maintenance works in Unit 8 of Tacoa thermal power plant in the state of Vargas (northern Venezuela's coast).Igor Gavidia, the head of the National Center for Electric Power Delivery of the National Electricity System (SEN), said in a press release that power-rationing began on Tuesday, including a load of 300 megawatts (MW). The rationing program, he added, "will continue with two blocks of 200 MW each, depending on the increase of power demand" at night. The implementation of a power-rationing program has prevented outages in the Venezuelan capital but hits most of the province. The Planta Centro complex, one of Latin America's largest thermal power plants, is also working at full capacity.As stated by the competent authorities, the power cut was made in proportion to the demand of each state. A total of 120 MW were cut in the central part of the country, the plains region and part of the western Venezuelan states. According to the report the cuts were as follows: Carabobo (14 percent); Yaracuy (1 percent); Guárico (3 percent); Cojedes (1 percent); Portuguesa (3 percent); Miranda (4 percent); Aragua (8 percent); Falcón (5 percent) and lower Apure (1 percent).The Ministry of Electricity cut 27 MW in the western states of the country: Mérida (1 percent); Táchira (3 percent); Trujillo (2 percent); Barinas (2 percent) and the higher parts of Apure (1 percent). In the eastern region of the country, the power rationing amounted to 75 MW, and it was as follows: Sucre (4 percent); Monagas (6 percent); Anzoátegui (12 percent) and Nueva Esparta (3 percent). In the case of Lara and Zulia states the power-rationing was 5 percent and 21 percent, respectively.mleon@eluniversal.comTranslated by Gerardo Cárdenas

Venezuela: a minefield

2011-02-15T21:25:00.001-08:00

Venezuela: a minefield

[02-13-11] The New Year has found Venezuela rife with problems. Complaints, exasperation and overall inconformity with how things stand have become compounded by unsatisfied expectations. Not a single area in the life of the country has been spared. Productivity is at its lowest and unemployment at its highest. The economy as a whole, but in particular the agriculture and industry sectors, as well as social services such as health and education, judicial services and personal safety, housing and transportation, are all in crisis due to current government policies.

Workers and Trade Unions, including those sympathetic to the government, are demanding respect for unfulfilled labor agreements. The oil industry, unable to cope with the government’s many demands, has resorted to increase its debt and to future sales contracts at prices well below the market. Electricity is rationed. During the dry season there is no water, and during the rainy season, when there is water in excess, there is no way to mitigate its damages. The hailed increased gas production never materialized and Venezuela has even had to import. Non-traditional exports have declined alarmingly and dependence on imports increased exponentially. In 2010, for the second time in a row, Venezuela’s BOP closes with a deficit above US$ 10 billion.

With risky brinkmanship tactics, the ‘revolution’ seems to be purposefully creating an atmosphere of anarchy in selected sectors of economic and social development. Not even culture has been spared. In a situation reminiscent of a "Maoist cultural revolution" of sorts, a revolutionary dogma has been imposed on the cultural establishment. Museums are accused of being "elitist spaces" and the national heritage they safeguarded left unattended, dispersed, or lost. In early 2011, the internationally-recognized ‘Jacobo Borges’ and ‘Alejandro Otero’ Museums were turned into shelters for the homeless since the homeless and displaced, in the words of the Minister of Culture, are in and by themselves "a work of art".

The government’s total incompetence during the twelve years it has held absolute power is clearly revealed by the inexplicable and unacceptable housing deficit, which now serves the President for his absolutely unconstitutional seizures of private property. After twelve years of smoke and mirrors, housing has now become the focus of the government’s concern, in a belated attempt to amend its negligence in this sector, as in many others. Housing developments plans in urban and rural areas were abandoned as a whole. The systematic, unjustifiable and at times violent expropriation of productive land, homes and businesses has left Venezuela paralyzed and bewildered.

Although the opposition’s current participation in the National Assembly has brought some fresh air into politics, efforts are however made by the government to restrict the exercise of the parliament’s oversight responsibilities and keep the "circus" going on. Universities has been systematically sabotaged by budgets cuts, while the appointment of a new Minister of Higher Education – who although a career educator is totally committed to the leader of the revolution’s designs like the rest of her predecessors - intends to mitigate the government’s previous mishaps in trying to reduce or eliminate the universities independence.

Time bombs are ticking all over Venezuela and the outlook for 2011 is not flattering. A forecasted 38% rate of inflation, among the highest in the world, will seriously further reduce Venezuelans’ purchasing power. The basic “Food Basket” is officially estimated at Bs. 3,600, while the “Basic Basket”, which includes other than food basics, at Bs 8,000, with annual increases of 30% and 43%. Unemployment is expected to be greater than 14%.

Over and above the unpromising omens that the current government's mismanagement announces for this year, the lack of civility in the country and among its citizens is particularly disturbing. Anxiety, restlessness and unease among Venezuelans have become pervasive. Violence, linked to un-satisfied daily basic needs, reduced purchasing power and unemployment, creates an implosive environment. Fortunately, polls show that Venezuelans’ most important wish is still to enjoy peace and unity through tolerance and respect.

The Bolivarian Brain Drain

2011-02-15T21:19:00.004-08:00

The Bolivarian Brain Drain - Newsweek - 06/30/2009

Hugo Chavez and his allies are tightening their grips, forcing the intelligentsia to leave in droves.

For just a moment, in the early days of his presidency, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez looked almost like a healer. "Let's ask for God's help to accept our differences and come together in dialogue," he famously implored his conflicted compatriots in 2002. Instead what Venezuelans got was an avenger. The government is seizing privately owned companies and farms. Labor unions have been crushed. Political opponents are routinely harassed or else prosecuted by chavista controlled courts. And now after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. Artists, lawyers, physicians, managers and engineers are leaving the country by droves, while those already abroad are scrapping plans to return. The wealthiest among them are buying condos in Miami and Panama City. Cashiered oil engineers are working rigs in the North Sea and sifting the tar sands of western Canada. Those of European descent have applied for passports from their native lands. Academic scholarships are lifeboats. An estimated million Venezuelans have moved abroad in the decade since Chávez took power.

This exodus is splitting families and interrupting careers, but also sabotaging the country's future. Just as nations across the developing world are managing to lure their scattered expatriates back home to fuel recovering economies and join vibrant democracies, the outrush of Venezuelan brainpower is gutting universities and thinktanks, crippling industries and hastening the economic disarray that threatens to destroy one of the richest countries in the hemisphere. Forget minerals, oil and natural gas; the biggest export of the Bolivarian revolution is talent.

The Bolivarian diaspora is a reversal of fortune on a massive scale. Through most of the last century, Venezuela was a haven for immigrants fleeing Old World repression and intolerance. Refugees from totalitarianism and religious intolerance in Spain, Italy and Germany and Eastern Europe flocked to this country nestled between the Caribbean and the Andean cordillera and helped forge one of the most vibrant societies in the New World. Like most developing nations, the country was split between the burgeoning poor and an encastled elite. But in the 1970s and 1980s, Venezuelans were the envy of Latin America. Oil rich, educated, with a solid democratic tradition, they lived a tier above the chronically unstable societies in the region. "We had a relatively rich country that offered opportunities, with no insecurity. No one thought about leaving," says Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, who lives in New York. "Now we have rampant crime, a repressive political system that borders on apartheid, and reverse migration. Venezuela is now a country of emigrants."

It's much the same all over the axis of Hugo, the constellation of 10 states in the Andes, Central America and the Caribbean that have followed Chávez in lockstep in the march towards so called 21st century socialism. In the name of power, justice and plenty for the downtrodden the leaders of the "Bolivarian alternative" in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua are rewriting their constitutions, intimidating the media and stoking class and ethnic conflicts that occasionally explode in hate and violence. (The military coup on June 28 that ousted Honduran president Manuela Zelaya, a key Chávez ally, is the latest example of the blowback from the Bolivarian revolution.) The middle classes and the young are taking the brunt. A study just released by the Latin America Economic System, an intergovernmental economic research institute, reports that the outflow of highly skilled labor, aged 25 or older, from Venezeula to OECD countries rose 216 percent between 1990 and 2007. A recent study by Vanderbilt University in Nashville showed more than one in three Bolivians under 30 had plans to emigrate, up from 12 percent a decade ago, while 47 percent of 18-year-olds said they planned to leave. Many established professionals have already made up their minds. "I ask myself if I'm not patriotic enough," says Giovanna Rivero, an acclaimed Bolivian novelist who is leaving for a teaching job at the University of Florida and has no plans to come back. "But Bolivia is coming apart. There are people who´ve known each other all their lives who don't talk to one another anymore."

In Venezuela, Chavez has pushed hard against anyone who refuses to accept his party line. Daniel Benaim was one of Venezuela's top independent television producers, turning out prime time entertainment and game shows for national channels with Canal Uno, a leading production house. "We had 160 employees and a 24/7 operation," he says. But after the failed coup against Chávez in 2002, the government cracked down on independent media and programming budgets dried up. In a month, Canal Uno was down to four employees and heading for bankruptcy. Benaim redirected his business to serve the international advertising market and raked in prestigious international awards, including multiple Latin Emmys. But opportunities for non-chavistas in Venezuela had dried up. One by one, he watched the people he trained over the years leave the country. "I used to give angry speeches about the brain drain. Now I have to bite my tongue," says Benaim, who is also moving to the U.S. "We had the best minds in the business, and now there's nothing for them here."

One of Benaim´s associates was Gonzalo Bernal Ibarra. He, too, had soared up the career ladder in broadcast television and until recently ran a campus network that reached 100,000 students. Everything changed in late 2007 when Chávez lost a refrendum to rewrite the constitution and began to crack down on his media critics, including Bernal. Strangers in jackets with weighted pockets--dress code for Chávez´s military intelligence police--began to follow him day and night. Then congress was set to pass a bill obliging schools to teach 21st century socialism. "I didn't want my kid learning that crap," he says. Even shopping became a trial as spiking inflation and government price controls emptied the supermarkets of basic goods like milk, eggs and meat. One day in late 2008, he opened a bottle of whiskey and held a yard sale. "I got drunk and watched my life get carted away," he says. He now lives in the Washington, D.C. area, with his wife and six year old daughter, and is trying to adapt. "I was living in the most beautiful, wonderful, funny country in the world. Now a third of my friends are gone. In another ten years, Venezuela is going to be a crippled country."

No industry has been harder hit by the flight of talent than Venezuela's oil sector. A decade ago, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) ranked as one of the top five energy companies in the world. Everything changed under Chávez, who named a Marxist university professor with no experience in the industry to head the company. PDVSA's top staff immediately went on strike and paralyzed the country. Chávez responded by firing 22,000 people practically overnight, including the country's leading oil experts. As many as 4,000 of PDVSA's elite staff are now working overseas. "The company is a shambles," says Gustavo Coronel, a former member of the PDVSA board, who now works in the Washington D.C. as an oil consultant. Up until 2003, researchers at the company's Center for Technological research and Development generated 20 to 30 patents a year. Last year it produced none, even though its staff has doubled. PDVSA produced 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day when Chávez took control. Now it pumps 2.4 milion, according to independent estimates.

The decline has spread across Venezuelan society, heightened by cronyism, corruption and censorship. In May, on the pretext that scientists were pursuing "obscure" research projects such as "whether there is life on Venus," Chávez began to slash budgets at the university science centers, where the country's cutting edge public health research was carried out. Instead he poured petrodollars into official "misiones cientificas" (scientific missions), where the purse strings are controlled by Chávez allies. Now the country's most respected research institutes are falling behind. Earlier this year, Jaime Requena. a Cambridge University trained biologist at the Institute of Advanced Studies, was forced into retirement and stripped of his pension after publishing a paper charging that scientific research in Venezuela was "at a 30-year low." The number of papers published by Venezuelans in international scientific journals fell from 958 to 831, a 15 percent drop in just the last three years. At aged 62, with an aging mother, Requena has few options. "It's not easy to get another job at my age. I would leave Venezuela if I could. My friends and colleagues all have."

An estimated 9,000 Venezuelan scientists are currently living in the U.S. - compared to 6,000 employed in Venezuela. One of the victims is an internationally acclaimed life sciences expert, who quit his job as chief of a major research laboratory in Caracas to try his luck in the U.S. in 2002, but always nursed hopes of returning. "I sent the government a number of proposals and they never got back to me," he says asking not to be named for fear of reprisals against his relatives in Venezuela. "Now it's all about politics. If you are not with Chávez you will never get grants. You will be persecuted. This is a war on merit." Venezuelan medical science, he said, is groping in the dark. "The last epidemiological report Venezuela published was in 2005," he says. "We don't even know what diseases we have and whether they are increasing or decreasing. This is the Cuban model, of keeping people in the dark."

The Bolivarian diaspora seems to be getting worse. Though census data is patchy, Latin American analysts say that outmigration from Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador has created sizeable enclaves in the U.S., Spain, Colombia and Central America. Panama City glistens with new buildings built by moneyed Venezuelan expatriates, who number some 15,000, up from a few thousand at the beginning of the decade. So many Venezuelans have flocked to Weston, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, locals call it Westonzuela. There is hardly a middle class family in Venezuela without a son or daughter abroad," says Fernando Rodríguez, a columnist for the anti Chávez newspaper Tal Cual. In fact, far more people from the Bolivarian countries might be emigrating if it weren't for the global recession and rising hostility to outsiders, Venezuelan emigrants do not qualify as political refugees and enjoy no special advantage in the fierce competition for the 400,000 H1B work visas issued yearly by the U.S. for highly skilled migrants, three quarters of which go to Indians, who have an edge because they can speak English. "One reason we are not seeing more dislocation from these countries is that many people have no place to go," says Alejandro Portes, a sociologist who studies global migration at Princeton University.

Latin America has seen this before. Virtually the entire Cuban middle class fled to the U.S. after Fidel Castro's revolution, turning Miami into a business hub for Latin America while Havana moldered. The Cold War, stagflation, serial debt crises and massive unemployment drove the brain drain through the 1980s, Latin America's lost decade, especially in Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Peru and throughout Central America. By the early 2000s, some of the countries convulsed by dictatorship or guerrilla insurgency, such as Chile and Peru, had managed to reverse course, making their societies prosperous and safe. But other countries have struggled to bring their expatriates home. In the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia had become synonymous with cocaine, violent crime and guerrilla warfare, all of which drove some four million Colombians from their homes. Targeted by kidnappers and political thugs, tens of thousands of middle class professionals left the country. In 2002 Pres. Álvaro Uribe declared war on drugs and crime, and now onetime bandit cities like Cali, Medellin and Bogota are safer than ever and have even become models for the rest of crime-ridden Latin America. Yet the brain drain has not reversed. "Either the [emigrants] have found the American dream or they are not yet convinced that it's safe to return," says Jorge Rojas, of Codhes, a Colombian thinktank that tracks refugees. "It shows how difficult it can be to recover lost talent."

For the nations of the Bolivarian Revolution, this means some dark days are likely to be ahead. Even the wealthiest nations could ill afford to lose their best and brightest, and Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have all fallen in the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index. Fitch ratings recently demoted all three countries' debt to junk status, while the World Bank placed the Bolivarian trio of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela in the bottom quarter of its ease of doing business, along with most of the African continent.

Though much has been made of how developing world migrants can mitigate underdevelopment by sending precious savings back home, remittances will not close the widening talent gap that is sapping societies of their ablest hands. "If a 20-something engineer or computer specialist leaves the country, who cares? But in ten years we'll be feeling the loss," says Rául Maestres, a human resources expert in Caracas, whose son and daughter recently left Venezuela -he to work at U.S. architecture firm, she to study advertising in Buenos Aires. "When you think about the opportunities we have lost, you could sit down and cry."

Still there may be a glimmer of revival. Ostracized at home and unwelcome abroad, expatriate communities are trying to turn distance into strength. Using the web, universities and the expatriate grapevine, foreign nationals from the populist countries are talking to each other and building ties with dissidents around the world. Back home opposition movements are making a stand, launching protest marches and candidates in a major city in each country--Guayaquil in Ecuador, Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, Maracaibo in Venezuela. "We are putting together a web of exiles as a counterbalance to authoritarianism," says Coronel, who is tapping the diaspora for a gathering in Ecuador or Argentina in the next few months. "You could call it a kind of axis of freedom." That may sound optimistic given the stranglehold Chávez and his followers have on their countries. But given the growing numbers and brain power of Latin America's new dissidents, uniting their voices might just make a difference.

In Venezuela, Chavez has pushed hard against anyone who refuses to accept his party line. Daniel Benaim was one of Venezuela's top independent television producers, turning out prime time entertainment and game shows for national channels with Canal Uno, a leading production house. "We had 160 employees and a 24/7 operation," he says. But after the failed coup against Chávez in 2002, the government cracked down on independent media and programming budgets dried up. In a month, Canal Uno was down to four employees and heading for bankruptcy. Benaim redirected his business to serve the international advertising market and raked in prestigious international awards, including multiple Latin Emmys. But opportunities for non-chavistas in Venezuela had dried up. One by one, he watched the people he trained over the years leave the country. "I used to give angry speeches about the brain drain. Now I have to bite my tongue," says Benaim, who is also moving to the U.S. "We had the best minds in the business, and now there's nothing for them here."
One of Benaim´s associates was Gonzalo Bernal Ibarra. He, too, had soared up the career ladder in broadcast television and until recently ran a campus network that reached 100,000 students. Everything changed in late 2007 when Chávez lost a refrendum to rewrite the constitution and began to crack down on his media critics, including Bernal. Strangers in jackets with weighted pockets--dress code for Chávez´s military intelligence police--began to follow him day and night. Then congress was set to pass a bill obliging schools to teach 21st century socialism. "I didn't want my kid learning that crap," he says. Even shopping became a trial as spiking inflation and government price controls emptied the supermarkets of basic goods like milk, eggs and meat. One day in late 2008, he opened a bottle of whiskey and held a yard sale. "I got drunk and watched my life get carted away," he says. He now lives in the Washington, D.C. area, with his wife and six year old daughter, and is trying to adapt. "I was living in the most beautiful, wonderful, funny country in the world. Now a third of my friends are gone. In another ten years, Venezuela is going to be a crippled country."
No industry has been harder hit by the flight of talent than Venezuela's oil sector. A decade ago, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) ranked as one of the top five energy companies in the world. Everything changed under Chávez, who named a Marxist university professor with no experience in the industry to head the company. PDVSA's top staff immediately went on strike and paralyzed the country. Chávez responded by firing 22,000 people practically overnight, including the country's leading oil experts. As many as 4,000 of PDVSA's elite staff are now working overseas. "The company is a shambles," says Gustavo Coronel, a former member of the PDVSA board, who now works in the Washington D.C. as an oil consultant. Up until 2003, researchers at the company's Center for Technological research and Development generated 20 to 30 patents a year. Last year it produced none, even though its staff has doubled. PDVSA produced 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day when Chávez took control. Now it pumps 2.4 milion, according to independent estimates.

The decline has spread across Venezuelan society, heightened by cronyism, corruption and censorship. In May, on the pretext that scientists were pursuing "obscure" research projects such as "whether there is life on Venus," Chávez began to slash budgets at the university science centers, where the country's cutting edge public health research was carried out. Instead he poured petrodollars into official "misiones cientificas" (scientific missions), where the purse strings are controlled by Chávez allies. Now the country's most respected research institutes are falling behind. Earlier this year, Jaime Requena. a Cambridge University trained biologist at the Institute of Advanced Studies, was forced into retirement and stripped of his pension after publishing a paper charging that scientific research in Venezuela was "at a 30-year low." The number of papers published by Venezuelans in international scientific journals fell from 958 to 831, a 15 percent drop in just the last three years. At aged 62, with an aging mother, Requena has few options. "It's not easy to get another job at my age. I would leave Venezuela if I could. My friends and colleagues all have."
An estimated 9,000 Venezuelan scientists are currently living in the U.S. - compared to 6,000 employed in Venezuela. One of the victims is an internationally acclaimed life sciences expert, who quit his job as chief of a major research laboratory in Caracas to try his luck in the U.S. in 2002, but always nursed hopes of returning. "I sent the government a number of proposals and they never got back to me," he says asking not to be named for fear of reprisals against his relatives in Venezuela. "Now it's all about politics. If you are not with Chávez you will never get grants. You will be persecuted. This is a war on merit." Venezuelan medical science, he said, is groping in the dark. "The last epidemiological report Venezuela published was in 2005," he says. "We don't even know what diseases we have and whether they are increasing or decreasing. This is the Cuban model, of keeping people in the dark."
The Bolivarian diaspora seems to be getting worse. Though census data is patchy, Latin American analysts say that outmigration from Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador has created sizeable enclaves in the U.S., Spain, Colombia and Central America. Panama City glistens with new buildings built by moneyed Venezuelan expatriates, who number some 15,000, up from a few thousand at the beginning of the decade. So many Venezuelans have flocked to Weston, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, locals call it Westonzuela. There is hardly a middle class family in Venezuela without a son or daughter abroad," says Fernando Rodríguez, a columnist for the anti Chávez newspaper Tal Cual. In fact, far more people from the Bolivarian countries might be emigrating if it weren't for the global recession and rising hostility to outsiders, Venezuelan emigrants do not qualify as political refugees and enjoy no special advantage in the fierce competition for the 400,000 H1B work visas issued yearly by the U.S. for highly skilled migrants, three quarters of which go to Indians, who have an edge because they can speak English. "One reason we are not seeing more dislocation from these countries is that many people have no place to go," says Alejandro Portes, a sociologist who studies global migration at Princeton University.

For just a moment, in the early days of his presidency, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez looked almost like a healer. "Let's ask for God's help to accept our differences and come together in dialogue," he famously implored his conflicted compatriots in 2002. Instead what Venezuelans got was an avenger. The government is seizing privately owned companies and farms. Labor unions have been crushed. Political opponents are routinely harassed or else prosecuted by chavista controlled courts. And now after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. Artists, lawyers, physicians, managers and engineers are leaving the country by droves, while those already abroad are scrapping plans to return. The wealthiest among them are buying condos in Miami and Panama City. Cashiered oil engineers are working rigs in the North Sea and sifting the tar sands of western Canada. Those of European descent have applied for passports from their native lands. Academic scholarships are lifeboats. An estimated million Venezuelans have moved abroad in the decade since Chávez took power.
This exodus is splitting families and interrupting careers, but also sabotaging the country's future. Just as nations across the developing world are managing to lure their scattered expatriates back home to fuel recovering economies and join vibrant democracies, the outrush of Venezuelan brainpower is gutting universities and thinktanks, crippling industries and hastening the economic disarray that threatens to destroy one of the richest countries in the hemisphere. Forget minerals, oil and natural gas; the biggest export of the Bolivarian revolution is talent.
The Bolivarian diaspora is a reversal of fortune on a massive scale. Through most of the last century, Venezuela was a haven for immigrants fleeing Old World repression and intolerance. Refugees from totalitarianism and religious intolerance in Spain, Italy and Germany and Eastern Europe flocked to this country nestled between the Caribbean and the Andean cordillera and helped forge one of the most vibrant societies in the New World. Like most developing nations, the country was split between the burgeoning poor and an encastled elite. But in the 1970s and 1980s, Venezuelans were the envy of Latin America. Oil rich, educated, with a solid democratic tradition, they lived a tier above the chronically unstable societies in the region. "We had a relatively rich country that offered opportunities, with no insecurity. No one thought about leaving," says Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, who lives in New York. "Now we have rampant crime, a repressive political system that borders on apartheid, and reverse migration. Venezuela is now a country of emigrants."

It's much the same all over the axis of Hugo, the constellation of 10 states in the Andes, Central America and the Caribbean that have followed Chávez in lockstep in the march towards so called 21st century socialism. In the name of power, justice and plenty for the downtrodden the leaders of the "Bolivarian alternative" in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua are rewriting their constitutions, intimidating the media and stoking class and ethnic conflicts that occasionally explode in hate and violence. (The military coup on June 28 that ousted Honduran president Manuela Zelaya, a key Chávez ally, is the latest example of the blowback from the Bolivarian revolution.) The middle classes and the young are taking the brunt. A study just released by the Latin America Economic System, an intergovernmental economic research institute, reports that the outflow of highly skilled labor, aged 25 or older, from Venezeula to OECD countries rose 216 percent between 1990 and 2007. A recent study by Vanderbilt University in Nashville showed more than one in three Bolivians under 30 had plans to emigrate, up from 12 percent a decade ago, while 47 percent of 18-year-olds said they planned to leave. Many established professionals have already made up their minds. "I ask myself if I'm not patriotic enough," says Giovanna Rivero, an acclaimed Bolivian novelist who is leaving for a teaching job at the University of Florida and has no plans to come back. "But Bolivia is coming apart. There are people who´ve known each other all their lives who don't talk to one another anymore."
In Venezuela, Chavez has pushed hard against anyone who refuses to accept his party line. Daniel Benaim was one of Venezuela's top independent television producers, turning out prime time entertainment and game shows for national channels with Canal Uno, a leading production house. "We had 160 employees and a 24/7 operation," he says. But after the failed coup against Chávez in 2002, the government cracked down on independent media and programming budgets dried up. In a month, Canal Uno was down to four employees and heading for bankruptcy. Benaim redirected his business to serve the international advertising market and raked in prestigious international awards, including multiple Latin Emmys. But opportunities for non-chavistas in Venezuela had dried up. One by one, he watched the people he trained over the years leave the country. "I used to give angry speeches about the brain drain. Now I have to bite my tongue," says Benaim, who is also moving to the U.S. "We had the best minds in the business, and now there's nothing for them here."
One of Benaim´s associates was Gonzalo Bernal Ibarra. He, too, had soared up the career ladder in broadcast television and until recently ran a campus network that reached 100,000 students. Everything changed in late 2007 when Chávez lost a refrendum to rewrite the constitution and began to crack down on his media critics, including Bernal. Strangers in jackets with weighted pockets--dress code for Chávez´s military intelligence police--began to follow him day and night. Then congress was set to pass a bill obliging schools to teach 21st century socialism. "I didn't want my kid learning that crap," he says. Even shopping became a trial as spiking inflation and government price controls emptied the supermarkets of basic goods like milk, eggs and meat. One day in late 2008, he opened a bottle of whiskey and held a yard sale. "I got drunk and watched my life get carted away," he says. He now lives in the Washington, D.C. area, with his wife and six year old daughter, and is trying to adapt. "I was living in the most beautiful, wonderful, funny country in the world. Now a third of my friends are gone. In another ten years, Venezuela is going to be a crippled country."
No industry has been harder hit by the flight of talent than Venezuela's oil sector. A decade ago, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) ranked as one of the top five energy companies in the world. Everything changed under Chávez, who named a Marxist university professor with no experience in the industry to head the company. PDVSA's top staff immediately went on strike and paralyzed the country. Chávez responded by firing 22,000 people practically overnight, including the country's leading oil experts. As many as 4,000 of PDVSA's elite staff are now working overseas. "The company is a shambles," says Gustavo Coronel, a former member of the PDVSA board, who now works in the Washington D.C. as an oil consultant. Up until 2003, researchers at the company's Center for Technological research and Development generated 20 to 30 patents a year. Last year it produced none, even though its staff has doubled. PDVSA produced 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day when Chávez took control. Now it pumps 2.4 milion, according to independent estimates.
The decline has spread across Venezuelan society, heightened by cronyism, corruption and censorship. In May, on the pretext that scientists were pursuing "obscure" research projects such as "whether there is life on Venus," Chávez began to slash budgets at the university science centers, where the country's cutting edge public health research was carried out. Instead he poured petrodollars into official "misiones cientificas" (scientific missions), where the purse strings are controlled by Chávez allies. Now the country's most respected research institutes are falling behind. Earlier this year, Jaime Requena. a Cambridge University trained biologist at the Institute of Advanced Studies, was forced into retirement and stripped of his pension after publishing a paper charging that scientific research in Venezuela was "at a 30-year low." The number of papers published by Venezuelans in international scientific journals fell from 958 to 831, a 15 percent drop in just the last three years. At aged 62, with an aging mother, Requena has few options. "It's not easy to get another job at my age. I would leave Venezuela if I could. My friends and colleagues all have."
An estimated 9,000 Venezuelan scientists are currently living in the U.S. - compared to 6,000 employed in Venezuela. One of the victims is an internationally acclaimed life sciences expert, who quit his job as chief of a major research laboratory in Caracas to try his luck in the U.S. in 2002, but always nursed hopes of returning. "I sent the government a number of proposals and they never got back to me," he says asking not to be named for fear of reprisals against his relatives in Venezuela. "Now it's all about politics. If you are not with Chávez you will never get grants. You will be persecuted. This is a war on merit." Venezuelan medical science, he said, is groping in the dark. "The last epidemiological report Venezuela published was in 2005," he says. "We don't even know what diseases we have and whether they are increasing or decreasing. This is the Cuban model, of keeping people in the dark."
The Bolivarian diaspora seems to be getting worse. Though census data is patchy, Latin American analysts say that outmigration from Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador has created sizeable enclaves in the U.S., Spain, Colombia and Central America. Panama City glistens with new buildings built by moneyed Venezuelan expatriates, who number some 15,000, up from a few thousand at the beginning of the decade. So many Venezuelans have flocked to Weston, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, locals call it Westonzuela. There is hardly a middle class family in Venezuela without a son or daughter abroad," says Fernando Rodríguez, a columnist for the anti Chávez newspaper Tal Cual. In fact, far more people from the Bolivarian countries might be emigrating if it weren't for the global recession and rising hostility to outsiders, Venezuelan emigrants do not qualify as political refugees and enjoy no special advantage in the fierce competition for the 400,000 H1B work visas issued yearly by the U.S. for highly skilled migrants, three quarters of which go to Indians, who have an edge because they can speak English. "One reason we are not seeing more dislocation from these countries is that many people have no place to go," says Alejandro Portes, a sociologist who studies global migration at Princeton University.
Latin America has seen this before. Virtually the entire Cuban middle class fled to the U.S. after Fidel Castro's revolution, turning Miami into a business hub for Latin America while Havana moldered. The Cold War, stagflation, serial debt crises and massive unemployment drove the brain drain through the 1980s, Latin America's lost decade, especially in Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Peru and throughout Central America. By the early 2000s, some of the countries convulsed by dictatorship or guerrilla insurgency, such as Chile and Peru, had managed to reverse course, making their societies prosperous and safe. But other countries have struggled to bring their expatriates home. In the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia had become synonymous with cocaine, violent crime and guerrilla warfare, all of which drove some four million Colombians from their homes. Targeted by kidnappers and political thugs, tens of thousands of middle class professionals left the country. In 2002 Pres. Álvaro Uribe declared war on drugs and crime, and now onetime bandit cities like Cali, Medellin and Bogota are safer than ever and have even become models for the rest of crime-ridden Latin America. Yet the brain drain has not reversed. "Either the [emigrants] have found the American dream or they are not yet convinced that it's safe to return," says Jorge Rojas, of Codhes, a Colombian thinktank that tracks refugees. "It shows how difficult it can be to recover lost talent."
For the nations of the Bolivarian Revolution, this means some dark days are likely to be ahead. Even the wealthiest nations could ill afford to lose their best and brightest, and Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have all fallen in the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index. Fitch ratings recently demoted all three countries' debt to junk status, while the World Bank placed the Bolivarian trio of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela in the bottom quarter of its ease of doing business, along with most of the African continent.
Though much has been made of how developing world migrants can mitigate underdevelopment by sending precious savings back home, remittances will not close the widening talent gap that is sapping societies of their ablest hands. "If a 20-something engineer or computer specialist leaves the country, who cares? But in ten years we'll be feeling the loss," says Rául Maestres, a human resources expert in Caracas, whose son and daughter recently left Venezuela -he to work at U.S. architecture firm, she to study advertising in Buenos Aires. "When you think about the opportunities we have lost, you could sit down and cry."
Still there may be a glimmer of revival. Ostracized at home and unwelcome abroad, expatriate communities are trying to turn distance into strength. Using the web, universities and the expatriate grapevine, foreign nationals from the populist countries are talking to each other and building ties with dissidents around the world. Back home opposition movements are making a stand, launching protest marches and candidates in a major city in each country--Guayaquil in Ecuador, Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, Maracaibo in Venezuela. "We are putting together a web of exiles as a counterbalance to authoritarianism," says Coronel, who is tapping the diaspora for a gathering in Ecuador or Argentina in the next few months. "You could call it a kind of axis of freedom." That may sound optimistic given the stranglehold Chávez and his followers have on their countries. But given the growing numbers and brain power of Latin America's new dissidents, uniting their voices might just make a difference.

Former Rep. Joseph Kennedy II is disgusting

2011-02-08T20:39:00.004-08:00

Joe Kennedy is supporting the dictator Hugo Chavez. How about the poor Venezuelans? They are poorer than the poor Americans. How about the hate Chavez has for Americans?, and also the fraud in the Venezuelan elections committed by Chavez?

Former Rep. Joe Kennedy teams up with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez — again

Caroline May - The Daily Caller Caroline May - The Daily Caller – Wed Feb 2, 1:39 am ET

For the sixth straight year and with the help of Joseph Kennedy II’s non-profit Citizens Energy Corporation, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez is again attempting to win over America’s less fortunate with the promise of free energy.
The end of January marked the beginning of the CITGO-Venezuela Heating Oil Program, a Venezuelan initiative to provide energy for needy individuals throughout the United States.
As a subsidiary of government-owned Petroleos de Venezuela, CITGO is synonymous with Venezuela’s anti-American, dissent-crushing president. Despite Chavez's abysmal human rights record, hatred of capitalism, anti-Americanism and blatant anti-Semitism, former Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Kennedy still finds it acceptable to partner with the Venezuelan oil giant.

“Every year, we hear from families who struggle each and every day to put food on the table and heat their homes,” said Kennedy in a statement. “We are deeply grateful to CITGO and the people of Venezuela for their generosity to those who need help keeping their families warm. Every year, we ask major oil companies and oil-producing nations to help our senior citizens and the poor make it through winter, and only one company, CITGO, and one country, Venezuela, has responded to our appeals.”

Despite his wintertime generosity, it is impossible to ignore Chavez’s ruthless leadership. Just a glance at his record since he took office in 1999 reveals mass press censorship (including a 30 month prison sentence for those who insult him) and takeovers, unlawful killings, torture, violent reprisals for political opponents, and nationalizations of private businesses.

His contempt for America is palpable. Speaking at UN headquarters in New York in 2006, Chavez called then President Bush a dictator and the devil (commenting that the podium still smelled like sulfur from when Bush had spoke the day before — several years later he said he believed Obama brought the same “stench”).
Not only has Chavez proclaimed America to be Venezuela’s “real enemy,” he has also said that the U.S. is the “first enemy” of its citizens, because after all, according to Chavez, “Capitalism will lead to the destruction of humanity.”
As if that were not disturbing enough, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has identified Chavez as a leader with nefarious intentions where Jews are concerned. This has manifest itself in many ways, including in his alliances with some of the worlds most anti-Jew, radical Muslim leaders, such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
While it may appear that Chavez has merely expanded his propaganda efforts — after all, the program’s website reeks of class warfare, complete with a video of babushka dolls trying to decide between hot water and medicine — the effort does have an impact. According to Citizens Energy Corporation, the program helps an estimated 500,000 people a year in 25 states and the District of Columbia.
Chavez’s words are prominently displayed on the site, telling poor Americans that Venezuelan success will be their salvation.
“We are all americanos, and together we share the Bolivarian mission of giving hope and a better life to the poorest and most vulnerable — whether they live in Venezuela or Vermont,” says Chavez. “Our oil revenues are bringing literacy, health care and job training to millions of Venezuelans and it is our wish to extend this prosperity throughout the hemisphere. This program fulfills a promise I made to the people of the United States, and it is a gift warmly given to our American friends.”
Citizens Energy Corporation did not respond to requests for comment.

Mack Calls on Kennedy to cease Pro-Chavez Ads Immediately

2011-02-08T20:27:00.002-08:00

We agree: Chavez has abuse Venezuelan Democratic System

Vdebate Reporter

Mack Calls on Kennedy to Cease Pro-Chavez Ads Immediately

For Immediate Release – February 7, 2011

Contact – (202) 225-2536

Joe Kennedy’s Pro-Chavez Ad Campaign Not a “Profile In Courage”

Mack Calls on Kennedy to Cease Pro-Chavez Ads Immediately

WASHINGTON – Calling Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a “world-class dictator,” Congressman Connie Mack (FL-14) today sent the following letter to former Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy to immediately cease his pro-Chavez ad campaign for CITGO.

The text is as follows:

February 7, 2011

The Honorable Joseph P. Kennedy II

Chairman

Citizens Energy Corporation

88 Black Falcon Avenue

Center Lobby, Suite # 342

Boston, MA 02210

Dear Congressman Kennedy:

I am writing to you again, as I did in 2007, for you to immediately cease your new ad campaign in support of Venezuelan world-class dictator Hugo Chavez, a man who suppresses the basic human rights of his people and has recently formed a strategic military alliance with Iran which threatens the security of the U.S. in our own backyard. What you are doing is disgraceful, shameful and against the interests of the American people.

At a time when the world is demonstrating unrest with dictators such as Chavez, you are allowing your name and image to be used to cover over the anti-American interests of Chavez. I would think you, of all people, would also not let yourself be duped by Chavez.

Only you can answer the question as to why: for the money, for the craving for the spotlight? I would imagine there would be many avenues at your disposal to help the needy instead of allying yourself with Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In this month of February alone, Hugo Chavez is shipping two cargoes of gasoline to Iran in direct violation of Comprehensive Iran Sanctions Accountability and Disinvestment Act of 2010, so in effect what your campaign purports to do is turn a blind eye to U.S. law and use the profits of the sale of gas to Iran to fund your pro-Chavez campaign and line your pockets. This is certainly not a Profile In Courage.

As Chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee I will soon be calling for a joint State Department/Treasury Department taskforce to investigate illegal activity engaged in by Venezuelan officials and Venezuelan owned PDVSA’s involvement in Iran’s energy sector. During the course of these investigations it would be informative for the American people to know how much Iranian money is being spent for your services and the ad campaign in support of Hugo Chavez.

The American people and I anxiously await your response.

Sincerely,

CONNIE MACK

Member of Congress

Coupsterism in his veins - Feb4, 2011

2011-02-06T12:03:00.001-08:00

VenEconomy- Feb.4, 2011
"Coupsterism" in his veins

On February 4, 1992, a group of officials of the Venezuelan armed forces attempted a coup d’état against the constitutionally elected president of the day, Carlos Andrés Pérez. Among the leaders of that attempted military coup was Hugo Chávez, today the President of Venezuela.
Thanks to a pardon granted by President Rafael Caldera, Hugo Chávez was able to reach the seat of Miraflores by the electoral route in February 1999.

However, during the three terms he has been in office, the present “Commander-President” has demonstrated his fondness for coups or “strikes against the State.” There is not a single institution or sector of society in Venezuela that has not been hit by such a coup garbed in a cloak of “legality.”

One of the first to receive a devastating coup was Petróleos de Venezuela, when more than 20,000 technical, professional, and managerial employees were fired in 2002, so depriving the company that is the country’s main source of revenue of domestic human talent that had taken years to train. Since then, PDVSA’s situation has gone from bad to worse.

Thanks to a submissive Electoral Council (CNE), there was a coup against more than 4 million Venezuelans who signed a petition for a referendum to recall Chávez’s presidential mandate. The CNE refused to acknowledge the validity of the signatures and forced people to sign again. Subsequently, the information supplied with the signatures was used to draw up the Tascón List, which has since served to implement a system of political apartheid against those who signed the petition.

The will of the people has also been the target of an ongoing coup when, even though the President’s proposed constitutional reform was rejected in 2007, he went ahead anyway and imposed each and every one of the rejected reforms via the legislative route. Today, it is being subjected to yet another coup when Central Government refuses to acknowledge governors, mayors, deputies, and parish councilors elected by direct, secret suffrage and when Chávez was given a fourth enabling law so that he can usurp the legislative role of the National Assembly.

There has been a coup against the independence of the justice system by means of amendments to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice Act that have permitted the appointment of justices at discretion, the majority of whom willingly bend to the Executive’s will. The cherry on the cake is that, today, there is no final sentence that cannot be quashed by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.

There have been continuous coups against the freedom of speech and information via a number of gag laws and also with the closure of Radio Caracas TV and more than 33 radio stations and the imposition of censorship and self-censorship on the media.

The “Commander-President” has committed coups against the productive sector with punitive laws, expropriations, and controls of all kinds; given workers and trade unions a beating, violating collective employment contracts and trade union privilege; and dealt mortal coups against private property.

He has been conducting a systematic coup against national sovereignty by handing over the management of areas that are of vital importance for Venezuelans and the country’s security to Cuba, run by the Castro brothers.

But above all, an irreversible coup has been committed against all the country’s citizens who are at the mercy of criminals thanks to the impunity allowed by the “Commander-President” and his warmongering discourse.

A Venezuelan Oasis of Elitism Counts Its Days

2010-12-28T15:37:00.002-08:00

A Venezuelan Oasis of Elitism Counts Its Days
BY SIMON ROMERO
Published: December 27, 2010

CARACAS, Venezuela — The golfers still argue over handicaps. The waiters still serve flutes of Moët & Chandon. Sunlight still kisses the grounds laid out in the 1920s by Olmsted Brothers, the esteemed American landscape architects.

El Pinguino bar at the Caracas Country Club, a last bastion of elitism that President Hugo Chavez has his eye on.
The idyll of the Caracas Country Club, a bastion of opulence for Venezuela’s elite, still seems intact.

But perhaps not for much longer.

Beneath the veneer of tranquillity, a feeling of dread prevails. A state newspaper published a study this month saying that if the government expropriated the land of the Caracas Country Club and that of another club in the city, housing for 4,000 poor families could be built on the parcels.

The idea is hardly far-fetched. After all, the government has seized hundreds of businesses this year alone, and thousands of people are homeless because of heavy rains, accentuating a severe housing shortage. At the behest of President Hugo Chávez, flood victims have already moved into hotels, museums, the Foreign Ministry and even his own office. (Mr. Chávez says he will stay in a tent given him by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.)

“We are waiting,” said Manuel Fuentes, 69, the country club’s vice president, in the English he learned as a teenager while studying at the New York Military Academy. “It would be a tragedy for the city to lose such an icon, but it’s a scenario we’ve been forced to acknowledge.”

In many ways, it is remarkable that such a club still exists here at all, given the expropriation of so many private companies this year, whether cattle ranches or construction firms. Some of the seized assets were owned by members of the Caracas Country Club, but somehow the club and its leisure pursuits, like show jumping, seemed to escape unscathed.

The club embodies the contradictions of Venezuela and its Socialist-inspired revolution, in which the moneyed elite still lead lives of luxury, even if their cloistered existence is often marked by resignation and fear. Members say the cost of joining, once $150,000, is now down to about $100,000, reflecting, in part, anxiety about belonging to a club in the government’s crosshairs.

Like a relic of an earlier time, the club stands for so much of what Mr. Chávez is against. But while many of its members chafe against the government’s attempts to exert greater control over the economy, some have seen their fortunes grow through quiet deals with Mr. Chávez’s government.

Adding to the rub, the club’s ties to one of Mr. Chávez’s favorite foils, the United States, are so deep that a former American ambassador, C. Allan Stewart, died of a heart attack while golfing on its greens and the names of its founders, including a cadre of American oilmen, are inscribed on its walls.

After this uneasy coexistence, Mr. Chávez called on this city’s golf courses last month to “put their hand on their hearts” to assist or house flood evacuees. If not, he said in a not-so-veiled threat, “we’ll put their hand there for them.”

The reaction to the club’s predicament reflects that of the polarized country itself. José Bejarano, 34, a motorbike courier who works in a neighborhood on the club’s southern fringe, said it was hard to shed any tears for such an island of privilege.

“We’re in a national emergency, and the club has empty land that can be used for the poor,” he said.

Only a short stroll away, Antonio Jerez, 42, a newsstand owner, said a takeover of the club would be folly. “Our president respects no one, as if he’s the only one entitled to the good things in life,” he said.

Almost drowned out in the whole debate is the option, supported by some of the club’s own members, that its golf course be made into a public park in a city badly in need of green space.

The club has faced challenges to its autonomy before. In 2006, the mayor of Caracas abruptly ordered the acquisition of its golf course. But maneuvering by the club’s lawyers and infighting among the president’s allies halted the takeover.

Much has changed since 2006, however, explaining the pall that settled over the club this month. Mr. Chávez, who is known to publicly telegraph his expropriation targets, said on state television that he could see the club’s expanses of land, its empty golf course, from overhead in his helicopter.

Club directors responded by saying the 18-hole course was exposed to flooding, too, making it impractical to pitch tents for evacuees on the premises. They said they were already providing employees and their families, many of whom live in nearby slums, with assistance during the floods.

Many Venezuelans live in cinder-block houses blanketing the hills in Caracas. Recent flooding displaced thousands. Now the stately clubhouse, which few Venezuelans aside from the 2,000 members and their guests ever enter, is rife with speculation over what will happen. One recent morning around the hair salon, rumors swirled among employees that federal officials had already conducted a secret inspection of the club.

“Someone commented that they had seen them,” said a member of the club as she passed the salon, asking that her name not be used because of the kidnapping threat for wealthy people in the public eye here. As for the supposed inspectors, she added, “It’s not that they got in.”

To arrive at the club, one must drive through a leafy district of private mansions called (in English, of course) Country Club. Once inside the grounds, it is easy to bump into prominent members of the upper crust that Mr. Chávez derides, like Peter Bottome, 72, one of the owners of RCTV, a television network critical of the president that was forced off the public airwaves in 2007.

“Private property, what’s that?” Mr. Bottome joked as he was getting a haircut in the barber shop.

Elsewhere, servants dashed about under the chandeliers. Macaws screeched from their perches in the samán trees. Bon vivants, dressed in blazers as per club rules, sipped whisky and puffed on cigars in El Pingüino, the club’s air-conditioned bar, in a scene that would not have been out of place in pre-revolutionary Havana.

Some members contend that Mr. Chávez’s rise had already changed life within the club forever, reflecting a chasm between members who have openly clashed with the president and others who have discreetly opted to profit from contracts with his government.

The emergence of a new class of magnates — called Boligarchs for their quick accumulation of wealth and their ties to the government, which reveres Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century liberation hero — also brought change to the club’s doorstep.

Some Boligarchs, like Wilmer Ruperti, an oil tanker tycoon, bought mansions close to the club, even if they never joined it. Another pro-government businessman, Diego Salazar, is a member. A senior public official or two are even occasionally glimpsed on the club’s grounds. Their presence captures the rise of one elite and the decline of another, and the sometimes awkward dance between these groups as this process unfolds.

Vanessa Neumann, a writer whose grandfather was a major industrialist here, described a recent show jumping competition at the club attended by Alejandro Andrade, a former military official and now Venezuela’s national treasurer. She said the fawning around Mr. Andrade, a noted horse aficionado who moves with ease in such rarefied circles, was more entertaining than the show jumping itself.

“You see the government apparatchiks paying private homage to the oligarchy they publicly ridicule, and vice versa,” Ms. Neumann said of the atmosphere at the club that day. “The former out of a desire to belong, the latter out of a desire to survive.”

A ridiculous cadena to hide the Sur del Lago protests

2010-12-20T19:57:00.001-08:00

I like how Daniel Duquenal writes, here is his blog:

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/

vdebate reporter

Sur del Lago people are resisting. The legislative assembly of the state moved down there to seat, the representatives elect are stirring the pot, the regime sent a Cuban general! A Cuban general to direct the repression, how appropriate!!!So, all of this is playing in Globovision and apparently whoever has access to Globovision is watching. That is too many people, no matter how many. So Chavez has prepared a cadena that has just started for the graduation of some of the new National Police that reaches its first year of existence. As far as we can tell the new National Police has made no dent on the crime rate of Venezuela however it has shown that it has been well trained for repression as we could see from the protest in Caracas subway about three weeks ago.In other words the cadena is useless but it serves a censorship purpose, the more so if as it is quite possible the regime decides to strike against the people blockading the roads.

Venezuelan electoral System is fraudulent

2010-11-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

San Francisco, November 1st, 2010
Tibisay Lucena CNE Director and President
Centro Simón Bolívar,
Edificio Sede del Consejo Nacional Electoral,
Frente a la Plaza CaracasCaracas, Venezuela
Teléfono: 58-212-408.52.00
Fax: 58-212-408.50.06

Sandra Oblitas Ruzza - CNE Director and Vice-president
Vicente José Díaz Silva – CNE Director
Socorro E. Hernández CNE Director
Tania D' Amelio Cardiet - CNE Director
Xavier A. Moreno R - General Secretary

Ref.: Publication of the results of overseas votes – Parliamentary elections of September 26, 2010

Venezuelans who live and vote abroad are concerned that the results of our votes have not been published in the pages of the CNE. Article number 125 of the Organic Law on Electoral Processes of Venezuela requires the CNE to the “Publication of the Results of Electoral Processes”.

Article 125. The Consejo Nacional Electoral (National Electoral Council) shall order the publication of the results of electoral processes in the Electoral Gazette of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela within thirty (30) days following the proclamation of the elected candidates.

To this date, after October 25 marked the 30 day established period to publish overseas electoral results, we find that the CNE has yet to comply, because its website is missing the publication. The Venezuelan National Electoral Council boasts of having one of the most modern electoral systems in the world, but not having complied with the publication of our information reveals exactly the opposite. Unfortunately, this recurring fact discourages the participation of Venezuelans living abroad in the electoral processes.
We are concerned that the same will happen as with previous elections, for example, the results of the Recall Referendum of the Constitutional Amendment proposed by President Hugo Chávez, which took place on February 15, 2009; overseas results where never published by the CNE.
Additionally, we would like to ask the CNE the early opening of the Permanent Electoral Registry (REP) at the consulates abroad, so that more Venezuelan citizens can exercise this important right.
Awaiting compliance with the law and the publication of the electoral results on the website of the National Electoral Council, we remain,

Noriega: Chavez the Cocaine Capo?

2010-11-10T17:32:00.003-08:00

AEI's Noriega in The American: Chávez the Cocaine Capo?

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/november/chavez-the-cocaine-capo

Chávez the Cocaine Capo?

By Roger F. Noriega Tuesday, November 9, 2010

One of the world's top drug kingpins may soon be telling U.S. prosecutors everything he knows about Venezuelan officials who have abetted his cocaine smuggling operations.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez should be very troubled that a man whom President Obama has branded one of the world's most significant drug kingpins, Walid Makled-Garcia, may soon be telling U.S. federal prosecutors everything he knows about senior Venezuelan officials who have abetted his cocaine smuggling operations.
Makled-Garcia's devastating testimony comes on the heels of fresh evidence of Chávez's support for terrorist groups from Spain, Colombia, and the Middle East and his apparent illegal support for Iran's nuclear weapons program. Slowly but surely, Chávez is being unmasked as a mastermind of a criminal regime.
According to a federal indictment unsealed in New York last Thursday, from 2006 through August 2010, Makled-Garcia conspired with Venezuelan officials to ship tons of cocaine from airstrips in that country to Central America, Mexico, and, ultimately, the United States. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called Makled-Garcia "a king among kingpins." Indeed, the Justice Department has designated him a "priority target," as one of the most dangerous and prolific narcotics traffickers.
Makled-Garcia was once known as one of Venezuela's most wealthy entrepreneurs. He came on to the radar screen of U.S. antidrug authorities years ago, when he was suspected of using his family business operations in the Venezuelan port of Puerto Cabello and his close ties to the Venezuelan military and Colombian narcotraffickers to smuggle cocaine. With the active complicity of dozens of senior Venezuelan authorities, Makled-Garcia allegedly operated a drug smuggling network using airstrips in Venezuelan territory. The family also is suspected of being involved in more than a dozen murders, including those of a respected Venezuelan journalist and a Colombian narcotrafficker.
Based on the U.S. indictment, Colombian authorities arrested Makled-Garcia on August 18, and are currently considering a U.S. extradition request for the notorious suspect. In the meantime, in a jailhouse interview with Colombia's RCN TV last week, Makled-Garcia said he has enough evidence of high-level drug corruption-including videos and bank records-"for the U.S. to intervene and invade Venezuela, as with [Manuel Antonio] Noriega in Panama.
"I gave money to 15 Venezuelan generals," the 41-year-old prisoner told RCN. "If I am arrested for a DC-9 loaded with drugs from the Simon Bolivar Airport, general Hugo Carvajal [director of Venezuela military intelligence], general Henry Rangel Silva [head of internal intelligence], general Luis Mota [commander of the national guard], and general Nestor Reveron [head of the anti-drug office] should be going to jail for that very reason."
In an interview last month with the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional, Makled-Garcia said, "As evidence of what I'm saying, I have vouchers, account numbers where I have deposited money in the name of wives, brothers and sisters" of "ministers, generals, admirals, colonels and five deputies of the National Assembly."
Acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration Michele M. Leonhart issued a statement last Thursday making it clear that she expects Makled-Garcia to be surrendered to U.S. authorities. "Due to the outstanding work with our partners in Colombia and elsewhere, Makled-Garcia is behind bars and awaiting extradition to the United States for the crimes in this indictment," she said. "He has built a vast global drug trafficking empire on illicit proceeds. His arrest will impact worldwide supplies of drugs, and we are committed to now ensuring he faces justice in the United States."
Of course, Chávez is desperate to get his hands on Makled-Garcia.He pleaded with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to send the Venezuelan detainee home, where he would no doubt be silenced by Chavista police and judges. Santos is unlikely to risk his country's long-standing alliance with U.S. law enforcement by sending Makled-Garcia anywhere but the United States. Moreover, as a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture, the Colombian government also must satisfy human rights concerns by making a determination that Makled-Garcia will not be subject to torture if he is surrendered to Venezuela.
In a televised interview conducted during a visit to Cuba, Chávez said Sunday that he expected the United States to use Makled-Garcia's allegations "against Venezuela and its president" as a pretext "to take Venezuela to the International Criminal Court, to include Venezuela among states that support narcotrafficking and terrorism, as part of the 'empire's' game to mount operations against the Bolivarian Revolution."
Indeed, U.S. law enforcement agents and prosecutors have Venezuela's criminal network in their crosshairs, and Makled-Garcia is ready to implicate senior ministers and military leaders. Some may think that the conspiracy goes no higher than members of Chávez's inner circle. But Chávez appears to know better.
Roger F. Noriega was ambassador to the Organization of American States from 2001 to 2003 and assistant secretary of State from 2003 to 2005. He is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and managing director of Vision Americas LLC, which represents U.S. and foreign clients.

Venezuela's opposition gains, but Chavez isn't defeated

2010-10-06T17:00:00.005-07:00

The CNE - Venezuela Electoral Organization hasn't added the votes of the venezuelans overseas. I don't trust our CNE. I think that some electronic voting machines were tampered.

vdebate

Venezuela's Opposition Gains, but Chavez Isn't Defeated
Andres Brender-Beracha

The Venezuelan opposition recently made huge gains against the Goliath of Venezuela (strong-man Hugo Chavez). Chavez used all the power and resources the oil-rich nation has to buy votes and intimidate public workers—who account for more than a million people. He gave fridges, kitchens and appliances for free; and a day before the election, he rolled out a type of credit card that will allow Venezuelans to buy at the sate's stores and finance the payment—that is, if they're lucky enough to find what they're looking for, since in Venezuela it's easier to get a gun than coffee or napkins at times. When the opposition won a referendum and rejected a constitutional reform that Chavez wanted to promote in order to become the perpetual commander of the country in 2007, many said that it was the beginning of the end

Despite being an important triumph, he amassed more power in the subsequent years and will probably do so in the coming ones unless the opposition remains united and fight him—which they've vowed to do so. The oppositions is stronger and united, which is important, but Chavez, though less stronger, still has an important and big base of support. Not only the 48% of support that a single man has, but also all the branches of power. The good news though is that more and more Venezuelans are becoming very unhappy with Chavez's program for the country, which clearly is the destruction of the private sector—which creates and promotes employment—destruction of the federal state, of the production system... of the country itself, with the sole purpose to become the Fidel Castro of the 21st Century. The coming years will surely be interesting to see.

It wasn't only the absurd abuse of the nation's coffers that Chavez used in order to achieve the 2/3 he wanted to get in the Assembly—he controls all the branches of power, including the electoral one that allowed him to change the law and change the circuits for voting in favor of the states that are more "chavistas;" thus, when the opposition needs, for example, 300,000 votes in Miranda state—where the opposition rules; in the state of Delta Amacuro, which is chavista in its majority, they only need 40,000 votes to elect one member.

Given all these facts and the undemocratic behavior of the narcissist President, officially, the opposition—grouped under the umbrella of Democratic Unity Front—didn't win the majority of the seats (they won 65 against 98 from the PSUV—big gain nevertheless), but they prevented the strongman from not only acquiring 2/3 of the Assembly, but also the 99 members required to give him special powers and rule by decree.

Yet, more importantly, on the national vote, the opposition won 52% against 48%. This is huge, given the facts described before. But still, it is necessary to acknowledge that Chavez still has a strong support.

Despite the fact that the Caribbean nation has rampant crime, the highest inflation of Latin America, shortages of food and electricity, it is unbelievable, yet true, that a single man, after 11 years in power, still amasses 48% of the electorate—regardless of how many of these vote stem from pressure or fear.

When the opposition won a referendum and rejected a constitutional reform that Chavez wanted to promote in order to become the perpetual commander of the country in 2007, many said that it was the beginning of the end the authoritarian rule. Despite being an important triumph, he amassed more power in the subsequent years and will probably do so in the coming ones unless the opposition remains united and fight him—which they've vowed to do so.

The oppositions is stronger and united, which is important, but Chavez, though less stronger, still has an important and big base of support. Not only the 48% of support that a single man has, but also all the branches of power.

The good news though is that more and more Venezuelans are becoming very unhappy with Chavez's program for the country, which clearly is the destruction of the private sector—which creates and promotes employment—destruction of the federal state, of the production system... of the country itself, with the sole purpose to become the Fidel Castro of the 21st Century. The coming years will surely be interesting to see.

Tired of Chavez

2010-10-04T17:54:00.002-07:00

Tired of Chávez

OUR OPINION: Voters reject president's destructive antics
The people of Venezuela sent Hugo Chávez an unequivocal message on Sunday: They want their democracy back.

Leading up to a momentous legislative election, Venezuela's president did everything in his power to stack the deck in his favor, from outrageous gerrymandering to seizing near-total control of the media. Yet even so, the opposition dealt Mr. Chávez and his Bolivarian movement a powerful blow by winning about half the popular vote, which resulted in capturing one-third of the seats in the National Assembly.

Mr. Chávez may well respond by trying to undercut the powers of the assembly, but this would only send another signal that he will not be restrained by the popular will. That's how it works in Mr. Chávez's Venezuela.

Still, the increased number of opposition votes in the assembly will make it harder, if not impossible, to enact Chávez-mandated changes every time the leader of spaceship Venezuela declares, Make It So. A newly empowered and confident minority will continue to benefit from Mr. Chávez's declining popularity and increasingly despotic behavior.

The lesson of this election is that the opposition has recovered from its misguided attempts to discredit the electoral system by boycotting elections, as they did in 2005. They now can rely on the increasing frustration of the electorate to confront Mr. Chávez.

This will require courage because Mr. Chávez has a record of persecuting political opponents, but democracy advocates should take heart from the electoral results because time is on their side. The longer Mr. Chávez stays in office, the more inept his governance and the more unpopular he becomes.

Today, Venezuelans face an inflation rate of 30 percent and a declining living standard. They're tired of putting up with Mr. Chávez's destructive antics. His ability to fool most of the people most of the time is weakening.

Read more:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/29/1847450/tired-of-chavez.html

Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez is Named IPI’s 60th and Final World Press Freedom Hero

2010-09-04T10:46:00.002-07:00

Yoanis you are our hero.... for everyone that fight for liberty.

vdebate reporter

The International Press Institute today declared Cuban blogger Yoani Maria Sanchez Cordero its 60th World Press Freedom Hero.

Sanchez’s blog, Generation Y, is an acerbic critique of life in Cuba, and a telling reminder to the world of the restraints on free speech and expression on the Caribbean island.

Sanchez, a graduate of Havana University, left Cuba for Switzerland in 2002, but returned two years later. On her return, she set up, along with a group of other Cubans, the magazine “Consenso” as a forum for reflection and debate.

In 2007, spurred by what she saw as a growing repressive climate in her homeland, she launched her blog, Generation Y. Composed of reflections on daily life, politics and culture in Castro’s Cuba, the blog today boasts a readership of more than a million.

In early 2008, Sanchez reported that the site may have been targeted by government censors. In April 2008, the site became unavailable in Cuba.

Since then, Sanchez has resorted to extreme and creative measures to keep her blog alive. In a country where internet access is severely restricted and prohibitively expensive, Sanchez often poses as a tourist to access the internet, emailing her entries to friends outside the country who then publish them online.

Sanchez has been refused permission to travel outside of Cuba at least six times in the past two years alone, despite international acclaim for her blog. In 2008, “TIME Magazine” named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people, noting her “feisty dedication to the truth,” and pointing out that “under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot: freedom of speech.” She has also received the Ortega y Gasset Prize, Spain’s highest award for digital journalism; the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University; and in 2009, TIME Magazine named her blog among the 25 Best Blogs of 2009.

In her own country, however, Sanchez has repeatedly faced harassment by authorities. In November 2009, the Daily Telegraph reported that she was beaten by a group of unidentified men while on her way to a peaceful protest. According to the article, after the attack, she was dumped “again in the middle of the street, (…) leaving her bruised, scared and sobbing.”

Sanchez says she has not been able to see her own blog since 2007. She reports on her blog that she is under continuous surveillance by state security agents. On 24 May, Sanchez’s blog reported that her name had been announced on Cuba’s state-run Roundtable program, “mixed with concepts such as “cyber-terrorism,” “cyber-commandos” and “media war.”

“To be mentioned in a negative way in the most official program on television is, for any Cuban, the confirmation of her social death,” says Sanchez in her blog.

However, Sanchez refuses to be silenced. “If you are insulted by the mediocre, the opportunists, if you are slandered by the employees of the powerful but dying machinery, take it as a compliment,” she says on her blog.

“Sanchez’s tremendously important work provides a glimpse into what is otherwise a closed world,” said IPI Interim Director Alison Bethel McKenzie. “It is perhaps fitting that our 60th and final World Press Freedom Hero represents a future where the power of the internet can be harnessed to promote free speech. We are proud to know Yoani and to award this prestigious prize to her.”

"Yoani's work has contributed tremendously toward a more wholesome understanding of the reality of life in Cuba. Her clear insights, beautiful use of language and tenacity have distinguished Yoani as an outstanding Caribbean journalist, blogger and citizen. We all look forward to the day conditions in her homeland change so that free expression can be more fully and abundantly facilitated, encouraged and exercised. Our congratulations on her achievement of this prestigious award," said Wesley Gibbings, President of the Association of Caribbean Media Workers, reacting to the announcement of the award.

Venezuelan Minimum Wage Not Sufficient for Average Cost of Living (cost breakdown): Inflation and Stagnant Incomes to Blame

2010-09-04T10:27:00.001-07:00

Got from:
http://robertosilvers.blogspot.com/2010/09/venezuelan-minimum-wage-not-sufficient.html#more

Venezuelan minimum wage = BsF 1,224 per month.
BsF 14,688 per year or approximately
$3,400 USD per year.
Reasonable Average Costs (August 2010)
BsF 140,000 = New economy car
BsF 5,500 = Full size orthopedic mattress
BsF 4,500 = Basic food budget
BsF 5,500 = Refrigerator
BsF 5,000 = Washing machine
BsF 1,200 = Simple TV
BsF 600 = Shoes
BsF 550,000 = Apartment
BsF 1,400 = School Supplies
BsF 713,700 = TOTAL Cost of Living
48.5 = Years of working at minimum wage needed to afford above items.

Difficult to deal with the axis of Hugo

2010-07-10T09:15:00.006-07:00

The Chavista model of "Bolivarian Revolution" uses the ballot box to gain power, then consolidates it through coercion, confiscation, manipulation and assaults on freedom.
Dealing with the Axis of Hugo requires honesty and vigilance - not wishful glad-handing and looking the other way.

Difficult to deal with the axis of Hugo

By RAY WALSER WASHINGTON -- When someone sticks his face in yours and shouts you're his biggest enemy, it's a good idea to take them at their word.

Enter, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Recently, while hosting Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Chavez publicly committed to "saving the world from the imperialism and capitalist hegemony that threaten the human species." Topping the Chavez-Assad enemies list was the "Empire" - aka, the United States, followed closely by Israel.

Chavez has roiled U.S.-Latin American relations since taking office in 1998. And he's done nothing to tone down his act since Barack Obama entered the White House.

The Chavista model of "Bolivarian Revolution" uses the ballot box to gain power, then consolidates it through coercion, confiscation, manipulation and assaults on freedom.

Promising to end the "excesses" of capitalism, it expands economic socialism propped up primarily by Venezuela's vast oil wealth. The soundtrack accompanying all strong-arm tactics and power play is a steady stream of virulent anti-American rhetoric.

With his fiery sense of mission and a purse filled with oil revenues, Chavez has built an alliance of like-minded nations. The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) includes Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela.

In dealing with the ALBA-tross, the Obama administration has sought to avoid direct confrontation with Chavez, while trying to develop better ties with less hard-core ALBA affiliates like Ecuador and Bolivia. It's not working particularly well.

Ecuador's Rafael Correa has already forced out a U.S. anti-drug air base, colluded with narco-terrorists in Colombia, clamped down on press freedom and undermined rule of law. Despite this bad-boy behavior, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Quito on a diplomatic courting session earlier this month. Her advances made no apparent headway.

In Bolivia, Obama hopes to unthaw frozen relations with President Evo Morales, a man who famously promised to be America's "worst nightmare." He has expelled the U.S. ambassador and the Drug Enforcement Agency. He's now talking about kicking out the Agency for International Development. Morales' relentless paranoia, constantly stoked and enflamed by Chavez, continues to poison relations.

In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega - flush with Chavez's oil money - is poised to wreck that nation's fragile democracy, trying to alter the constitution so he can run for yet more terms as the president.

In Honduras, pro-U.S. President "Pepe" Lobo struggles to restore civic calm and democratic governance one year after the removal of a Chavez ally and populist wannabe, Manuel Zelaya.

The prospects for democratic change in Cuba remain bleak. Oil subsidies from a worshipful Chavez give the Castro brothers the economic wherewithal to maintain the repressive apparatus of state security, prisons and censorship.

At the April 2008 Summit of the Americas, Obama and Chavez shook hands. Chavez declared, "I want to be your friend." But instead of the open hand of friendship el Presidente has since displayed little but clenched fists.

Yes, Chavez has deigned to allow our ambassador to return to Caracas. But he has also threatened war with our ally Colombia, backed narco-terrorists, redoubled his arms build-up and offered total backing to nuclear-weapon-hungry Iran. Venezuela has become an international hub for radicals and anti-Americans of all stripes and a major transit point for cocaine flowing to West Africa and Europe.

The Axis of Hugo today threatens the political, economic and security health of the region and will continue to do so for years.

The proper role of the United States is to stand up for the values and principles of free societies, defend our interests and those of our friends, and keep a short leash on those who openly declare themselves as enemies.

Dealing with the Axis of Hugo requires honesty and vigilance - not wishful glad-handing and looking the other way.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Ray Walser is the senior policy analyst specializing in Latin America at The Heritage Foundation. Readers may write to the author in care of The Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, D.C. 20002; Web site: www.heritage.org. Information about Heritage's funding may be found at http://www.heritage.org/about/reports.cfm.

This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/07/08/1340871/difficult-to-deal-with-the-axis.html?story_link=email_msg#ixzz0tINOld5R

Venezuela a great example of misrule, mismanagement

2010-05-24T20:36:00.001-07:00

Venezuela a great example of misrule, mismanagement

Taken from www.newschief.com

Published: Monday, May 17, 2010 at 6:58 a.m.

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves outside the Mideast and some of the largest known natural gas deposits. Yet the country is an economic shambles thanks to the mismanagement of its buffoonish and authoritarian president, Hugo Chavez.

This past week, he further crippled the economy by effectively banning private bond trading in order to stop Venezuelans from sequestering their savings in dollar accounts.

He instituted currency controls of 2.60 bolivars to the dollar for priority goods and 4.30 for nonessential items. The black market rate is 8.20 bolivars to the dollar. Not surprisingly, there is a thriving black market, widespread shortages and soaring inflation of more than 30 percent.

In 2003, when Chavez began experimenting with price controls, Venezuela was self-sufficient in beef. Last year it imported more than half of what it consumed. After his police began rounding up butchers for selling beef at more than the state-mandated price, beef disappeared almost altogether from the stores.

The same has happened with coffee. After expropriating roasting companies, coffee warehouses and plantations, production in coffee-producing Venezuela fell by more than 16 percent last year and continues to decline.

Because of lack of investment in the national grid - and with some help from a drought - electricity is rationed and there are frequent blackouts and mandatory power cuts. Similarly, since he barred Western firms from participating in Venezuela's oil industry, investment has fallen and the country has turned to the Chinese for help.

Chavez has been incapable of dealing with the country's chronic crime and the Economist newspaper describes Caracas as "the most violent capital in South America."

He has spent $4 billion on Russian weapons against the imaginary threat of a U.S. invasion. His foreign policy consists of trying to build an anti-U.S. alliance of "21st-century socialists" like Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran Bolivia. He has been accused, convincingly in the case of Colombia, of aiding communist guerrillas and harboring violent Basque separatists from Spain.

In advance of next September's congressional elections, he has begun jailing opposition leaders on assorted trumped-up charges, such as the crime of spreading false information - the false information being criticism of Chavez and his policies.

Venezuelans, to their credit, stubbornly cling to democratic traditions. Despite his control of the judiciary, suppression of the opposition media and lavish spending on his base in the sprawling slums, his re-election in 2012 is no foregone conclusion. There may be a limit to Venezuelans tolerance for lowered standards of living and diminished freedoms.

Chavez' explanation: "There's an economic conspiracy against the revolution to boost inflation, increase shortages and malaise among the people."

We know who the conspirator is.

The preceding editorial was written by Dale McFeatters of Scripps Howard News Service.

Venezuela's Monetary Mayhem

2010-05-19T20:18:00.002-07:00

Venezuela's Monetary Mayhem

Fiat currencies plus bad government equal trouble.

Greece is bankrupt. But since it is a member of the euro-zone and can't print money, its richer European neighbors have agreed to bail out its creditors. In return, Greece is supposed to clean up its fiscal and regulatory act. This is why public-sector unions have been wilding in the streets and even firebombed a bank.

Beware of Greeks burning thrifts. They are not unlike the militants who violently protested in Argentina in 2001 when that government hit the fiscal wall. Argentina also had a hyper-regulated economy, a government addicted to spending, and a monetary regime that made it impossible simply to print money to pay its bills. At bottom Argentina's rioting mobs wanted the same thing that their Greek cousins want now: a return to a national currency that can be fabricated on demand.

Critics of the euro seem to think the Greek tragedy vindicates their view that each country should have its own currency and monetary policy. But that wouldn't solve a thing. Let's face it: If Greece weren't today's Argentina, it would be Venezuela. In that country, which has sovereign money—the bolivar—and no monetary rule to prohibit the central bank from financing the government, inflation is now spinning out of control.

In their 2009 defense of economic liberalism titled "Money, Markets and Sovereignty," Benn Steil, of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Manuel Hinds, former finance minister of El Salvador, provide a brief history of the rise of fiat currencies. "The modern mind," they explain, is used to "seeing money as a creation of states." Yet the powerful did not launch the idea some 2,500 years ago "to promote economic activity, but to profit from it," they note. "And today the imposition of national monies remains one of the most potent tools available to governments to extract wealth from their populations and to exercise political control over them."

Argentina crafted its "convertibility law," which required pesos to be backed up by dollar reserves, precisely to confront this problem. But the politicians weren't about to downsize their role, in spending or in regulation, and eventually too much debt led to bankruptcy. In 2002, the government pulled the plug on peso convertibility. Eight years later the so-called floating Argentine peso is a disaster. The country remains mired in economic mediocrity and double-digit inflation, and is held hostage by an illiberal government.

Anchoring the currency to the dollar and thus outsourcing monetary policy to the U.S. Federal Reserve had been a success, but special interests and politicians could not bear that it robbed them of power. Venezuela is another place where the politicians see no reason why the state's appetite for grabbing private-sector wealth should be constrained. Maintaining price stability ought to be a no-brainer because the government has oil revenues earned in dollars to back up the local currency. But the bolivar is now in free fall.

Hugo Chávez

In January, strongman Hugo Chávez announced that he would devalue the bolivar to 4.30-to-the-dollar (except for essentials) from 2.15. He assured Venezuelans that the government would be able to provide all the dollars needed to run the economy at the weaker bolivar level and that the black-market rate, which was six to one, would converge with the official rate.

But the private-sector was not convinced, and the black-market rate for dollars went even higher, pushing prices of imports up sharply. Nine days ago the cost of the dollar soared above eight, signaling a vicious inflationary spiral.

The source of this monetary mess is the state's hunger for power. Whereas Castro used terror to make himself dictator of Cuba, Mr. Chávez has used the state's control of oil revenues and the central bank to purchase his dictatorship. It's no secret that his popularity, despite the deterioration in Venezuelan living standards, comes from printing and spreading bolivars around low-income barrios as well as among nouveau-riche business elites and the military.

With too many bolivars chasing too few goods, Mr. Chávez is now blaming "speculators." Recently he arrested 47 butchers for evading his price controls. The Congress he controls has also proposed legislation to criminalize trading in the parallel market for dollars. Yet beyond terrorizing the nation, the crackdown is unlikely to improve things because the market needs dollars to function. "The collapse of the economy is very near," one Venezuelan wrote to me on Saturday.

The lesson here is that without political will, fiat money in any form—be it in a monetary union, anchored to a reserve currency or run by the sovereign—is unreliable. As Messrs. Steil and Hinds note, "money untethered to a commodity gives rise to inflation when managed by corrupt, irresponsible or incompetent rulers," thereby covering Greece, Argentina and Venezuela in one breath.

Harkening back to the wisdom of a 15th century Spanish canon lawyer, the authors capture today's fiat currency problem: "The ruler's power to create value from the valueless by designating it 'money' was bound to lead to inflation."

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com

Venezuela is Crumbling

2010-05-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

Really? It has been crumbling for a while.

Venezuela is Crumbling
Economic misery in Hugo’s populist paradise.
BY Jaime Daremblum
May 14, 2010 12:00 AM

Recent weeks have brought more depressing economic news from Venezuela, where populist leader Hugo Chávez seems intent on destroying not only democracy but also the last remaining vestiges of private enterprise.

On April 21, the Latin Business Chronicle predicted that Venezuela would post the world’s highest inflation rate in 2010, ahead of even the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

On May 5, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean reported that foreign direct investment (FDI) in Venezuela dropped from $349 million in 2008 to negative $3.1 billion last year, “mainly as a result of nationalizations.” In other words, the Bolivarian Republic experienced a net FDI outflow of $3.1 billion in 2009.

On May 7, the Venezuelan central bank released data showing that consumer prices rose by 5.2 percent from March to April. As Bloomberg News noted, this represented the largest monthly increase since 2003. Meanwhile, the annual inflation rate hit nearly 32 percent.

On May 11, the Chávez-controlled National Assembly introduced legislation designed to clamp down on currency trading and strengthen the bolívar, Venezuela’s national monetary unit. “This is a very negative measure for the Venezuelan economy,” Barclays Capital economist Alejandro Grisanti told Dow Jones. “It will increase the pressure on prices and will deepen the contraction of the economy.” In January, Chávez devalued the bolívar in order to facilitate greater social spending. Since then, the currency has plummeted, making Venezuela’s already dire inflation problem even worse.

Venezuelan judge is jailed after ruling angers President Hugo Chávez

2010-04-25T21:29:00.001-07:00

Venezuelan judge is jailed after ruling angers President Hugo Chávez
By Juan Forero
Sunday, April 25, 2010

LOS TEQUES, VENEZUELA -- Sitting in the tiny jail cell that has been her home for months, Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni said she knew a ruling she handed down in December might incense Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

But she was astonished when intelligence agents arrested her and the entire courtroom staff 15 minutes after she freed a prisoner the government wanted in jail.

"I never thought -- never -- that the violations would get to this point," said Afiuni, 46, who is being held here in a cellblock filled with women charged with drug trafficking and murder, some of whom she sentenced.

The jailing of a tenured judge who angered the president has brought into sharp focus the increasingly tight control Chávez exerts over the judiciary, a situation condemned by legal watchdog groups and constitutional experts across the Americas.

Advocates for an independent judiciary in Venezuela also say the judge's plight, along with the arrests of dozens of government opponents in recent months, demonstrates how far the Chávez administration will go to quell dissent.

"The message from the Afiuni case is very clear: If a judge doesn't do what we want, you go to jail," said Carlos Ayala, a constitutional lawyer and former president of the Andean Commission of Jurists. "Judges are scared out of their wits. Before, they got fired for these decisions. Now they go to jail."

Afiuni was charged with corruption and abuse of authority after she conditionally freed Eligio Cedeño, a banker who had run afoul of the government and was accused of evading currency controls. Cedeño waited in jail nearly three years for his first court hearing, which exceeded legal limits, Afiuni said in a recent interview. He fled the country and is seeking political asylum in Miami.

The Venezuelan attorney general's office said it could not comment on Afiuni's case. But in an interview, Carlos Escarra, a pro-Chávez congressman and legal expert, said "there's a series of actions that show a bribe was paid" to Afiuni, a charge she denies. In a speech the day after Afiuni was arrested, Chávez accused her of crimes "more serious than an assassination."

"I call for 30 years in prison in the name of the dignity of the country," he said.

More than any other case, Afiuni's arrest has alarmed independent justices and those who track Venezuela's judiciary. Bar associations from New York to Madrid have demanded her release, and thousands follow her through Twitter feeds. Her first court hearing has been postponed repeatedly by "suspicious delays," said one of her attorneys, Juan Ernesto Garanton.

"What has been really hard is knowing my fate is in Chávez's hands," Afiuni said. "Just as my detention was a result of the whim of the president, my release will also be a whim of his."

Chávez and ministers in his government frequently declared the judicial system in place before his election in 1998 a vestige of a corrupt system that needed to be jettisoned. In its place, the government in 2004 created a Supreme Court overwhelmingly sympathetic to the president, according to a recent report by the human rights arm of the Organization of American States, of which Venezuela is a member.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also found that Venezuelan judges have been dismissed after issuing rulings that antagonize the government, and that hundreds more are named to posts through an opaque system. Legal experts in Venezuela estimate that about half of the judges are provisional, which they say leaves them more susceptible to pressure.

Many of the remaining judges have demonstrated their allegiance to Chávez and expressed support for the government's efforts to create a system that blurs the separation of powers.

Escarra, the pro-government lawmaker, said judges who were replaced had issued rulings that favored people who wanted to destabilize Chávez. He said accusations that the president interferes in the judiciary were exaggerated.

Some judges have wound up like Juan Carlos Apitz.

In 2003, Apitz was on a five-judge court that ruled that doctors from Cuba, Venezuela's closest ally, could not work in Venezuela unless they revalidated their qualifications. At the time, Cuba was deploying thousands of doctors to Venezuela in exchange for cut-rate oil.

Chávez called the decision "unconstitutional." Then 46 intelligence agents raided the court and searched through paperwork for more than 10 hours. Apitz and two other judges who had ruled with him were banished from the judiciary; the two dissenters were promoted to the Supreme Court.

Apitz said the dismissal of independent judges means that opponents have no real legal recourse if they want to challenge a government investigation or an arrest. That is particularly troubling these days, he said, because the intelligence service has arrested dozens of anti-government student protesters and opposition leaders in recent months.

"In Venezuela, there is a grotesque inequality in applying the law," he said. "Those who do not share the national government's politics are at a disadvantage."

Arizona's Harsh Anti-Immigration Law Sparks Anger

2010-04-25T11:21:00.001-07:00

Arizona's Harsh Anti-Immigration Law Sparks Anger
More By Max Fisher on April 20, 2010 2:31pm
Arizona is not known for stretching a welcome mat across its long desert border with Mexico. The state's laws are among the country's harshest and most restrictive toward illegal immigrants. Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County was dubbed "America's toughest sheriff" for his sweeping arrests and sometimes rough treatment of suspected illegal immigrants. But Arizona's strict anti-immigration stance is about to get even stricter. The state senate has passed a new law that, if passed, will bring restrictions against suspected illegal immigrants, and relevant police powers, to unprecedented levels. Many national political pundits are stidently opposed or, in the case of many conservatives, conspicuously silent.

What the Bill Does The New York Times' Randal Archibold reports, "The bill makes it a state crime for immigrants not to carry authorization papers, requires the police 'when practicable' to check the immigration status of people they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally and allows people to sue cities and counties if the law is not being enforced." Gawker's Alex Pareene summarizes, "Now any cop in Arizona can ask anyone to prove their immigration status, and every cop in Arizona is compelled, under threat of lawsuit, to enforce federal immigration laws." Police do not require warrants or the proof of probable cause to detain suspected illegal immigrants.
The Guy Behind It Citing the New York Times report, Gawker's Jeff Neumann calls the bill's author, state senator Russell Pearce, "a friend of neo-nazis." Neumann cites photographs of Pearce appearing with a man who was also the featured speaker at a neo-nazi gathering, Pearce's stated admiration of a 1950s program called "Operation Wetback," and an email he sent to supporters that included (mistakenly, he said) an attachment from a white supremacist group.
Reminiscent of 'Fascist Europe' The Los Angeles Times editorial board calls it "racial profiling," lamenting, "Even legal immigrants, in a move that harks back to fascist Europe, would be required to carry their papers at all times or risk arrest."
'Off the Deep End' The New York Times is appalled. "The Arizona Legislature has just stepped off the deep end of the immigration debate, passing a harsh and mean-spirited bill that would do little to stop illegal immigration. What it would do is lead to more racial profiling, hobble local law enforcement, and open government agencies to frivolous, politically driven lawsuits."
Congressman: Mass Deportations Writing in the Huffington Post, Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez warns, "The Obama administration has escalated mass deportation as our singular approach to immigrants ... We are now deporting people at a rate of 1,000 per day -- with nearly half of the arrests in the state of Arizona -- and now the state legislature is on the verge of escalating that pace dramatically."
Legislation Unlike Anything Since Jim Crow Arizona-based legal defender Isabel Garcia tells CNN that the bill "legalizes racial profiling." She says,"I think this bill represents the most dangerous precedent in this country, violating all of our due process rights. ... We have not seen this kind of legislation since the Jim Crow laws. And targeting our communities, it is the single most largest attack on our communities."
AZ Senators: We Don't All Support The Washington Independent's Julizza Trevino reports, "Several senators spoke out against the bill, arguing that Arizona could become the Alabama of the new century, that the bill may be unconstitutional and that it could turn family members of illegal immigrants into criminals. One senator called the bill 'un-American,' and another expressed concern over how Arizona might be viewed if the legislation were passed and whether tourism would suffer as a result."
Obama Could Have Averted This The American Prospect's Adam Serwer sighs, "this episode illustrates the folly of having tapped Janet Napolitanoto serve as Secretary of Homeland Security, given her past role as a check against the worst anti-immigrant impulses of Arizona politicians when she was the state's governor."

Wiesenthal Center Protest AZ Governor's Anti-Immigration Bill

2010-04-25T10:47:00.002-07:00

This isn't about immigration, it's about discrimination. This law stigmatizes people of color as second class citizens and exposes them to intimidation and the use of racial profiling as a weapon of bias.

Wiesenthal Center Protests AZ Governor's Anti-Immigration Bill

"This isn't about immigration, it's about discrimination," says Center founder Rabbi Hier
NEW YORK, April 23 /PRNewswire/ -- The Simon Wiesenthal Center today expressed disappointment that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed the anti-immigration bill into law, that among other things makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and requires local law enforcement to determine an individual's legal status and arrest without warrant a person if there is "reasonable suspicion" that he or she is in the U.S. illegally.

"This isn't about immigration, it's about discrimination," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center. "We should not forget that we're a nation of immigrants. This law makes no sense it guarantees and stigmatizes people of color as second-class citizens and exposes them to intimidation and the use of racial profiling as a weapon of bias," he concluded.

As part of its Tools for Tolerance® diversity programs, the Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and New York Tolerance Center in Manhattan include training law enforcement professionals across the country to address difficult questions and concerns over racial profiling. Law enforcement agencies across Arizona have participated in this program.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter page or mobile device.

SOURCE Simon Wiesenthal Center

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Arizona's Effort to Bolster local Immigration Authority Divides Law Enforcement

2010-04-25T10:17:00.003-07:00

I am against this law, totally racist and against the human rights.

vdebate reporter

NY Times

Arizona’s Effort to Bolster Local Immigration Authority Divides Law Enforcement
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

PHOENIX — A bill the Arizona Legislature passed this week that would hand the state and local police broad powers to enforce immigration law has split police groups and sown confusion over how the law would be applied.

While Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, has yet to say whether she will sign the bill into law, on Wednesday a national police group condemned it as likely to lead to racial and ethnic profiling and to threaten public safety if immigrants did not report crime or did not cooperate with the authorities out of fear of being deported.

The police group joined a growing list of organizations and religious and political leaders far from the state’s borders urging Ms. Brewer to veto the bill. Her spokesman said that of the 15,011 calls and letters her office had received on the bill, more than 85 percent opposed it.

The law would require the police “when practicable” to detain people they reasonably suspected were in the country without authorization. It would also allow the police to charge immigrants with a state crime for not carrying immigration documents. And it allows residents to sue cities if they believe the law is not being enforced.

Members of the Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative, a group of police leaders pressing for a federal overhaul of immigration law, said they worried that other states would copy Arizona, despite the likelihood that the law will be challenged in federal court.

“Just because it is in Arizona doesn’t mean it’s likely to remain there,” said George Gascón, the chief of the San Francisco Police Department and a former chief in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb. “We are very concerned about what could happen to public safety.”

The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police and several sheriffs have also come out against the bill, calling it burdensome and an intrusion into a federal matter.

Most police agencies or jails here already check the immigration status of people charged with a crime, in consultation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the new law would expand that power and allows the police to stop people on the suspicion of being in the country without documents.

The Mexican Embassy released a statement expressing concern that the law would lead to racial profiling and damage cross-border relations.

But some of the largest rank-and-file police groups have come out strongly in favor of the bill.

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the city police department’s largest union, has promoted the bill as a “common sense proactive step in the right direction in the continuing battle on illegal immigration.”

The Fraternal Order of Police, which represents 6,500 officers statewide, endorsed the bill but said it had reservations over the potential costs to departments and the lack of training for local officers to identify who might be in the country illegally.

Bryan Soller, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said if officers ended up arresting large numbers of illegal immigrants, that could add to already crowded jails and costs. Mr. Soller also said departments were worried about the expense of defending any lawsuits by people contending that the law was not being enforced.

But he said he thought many concerns were overblown. His group initially opposed the bill but endorsed it after language was included that he and sponsors believe give officers discretion to use it, in part to ward off federal civil rights claims.

“Some will go out and use it a lot,” Mr. Soller said. “But you are not going to see them doing things much different from what they do now.”

All sides agree that a federal overhaul to better control immigration would help, and advocacy groups, pointing to the Arizona bill, are pushing lawmakers to act soon. But several people involved in the negotiations in Washington said a federal bill was not close to being ready.

Julia Preston contributed reporting from New York.

Chavez under fire from international community

2010-04-23T22:27:00.001-07:00

Chávez under fire from international community

By Benedict Mander in Caracas

The unfulfilled dream of Hugo Chávez’s idol, Venezuela’s 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar, was to unify South America. But a heated exchange at a recent regional summit meeting – during which Venezuela’s leader told Alvaro Uribe, his Colombian counterpart, to “go to hell” – underlined how elusive this goal remains.

In recent days, Mr Chávez’s socialist government has come under heavy fire from the international community for allegedly assisting drug traffickers and violating human rights at home. Now it has been accused of co-operating with Spanish and Colombian insurgents on assassination plots.

Mr Chávez has rejected “unacceptable and politically-motivated accusations” made by a Spanish judge last week that it had collaborated with Basque separatist group Eta and Farc, the Colombian guerrillas, to assassinate top Colombian politicians including President Alvaro Uribe.

On the same day, Venezuelan security forces were singled out in the US State Department’s annual report on international drugs trafficking for “directly assisting” Colombian guerrillas linked to cocaine smuggling.

The previous week, the Organisation of American States released a scathing report accusing Venezuela’s government of undermining democracy and the rule of law through human rights abuses, political repression and eroding the separation of powers.

Venezuelan authorities brushed off the criticisms as part of a continued internationally co-ordinated smear campaign intended to discredit Mr Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution”, long a fierce opponent of global capitalism and US imperialism.

“It’s been said that there are Hezbollah cells in Venezuela, practically that Bin Laden is in Venezuela – they also say that we are trying to build an atomic bomb with Iran. It’s laughable,” said Mr Chávez.

Mr Chávez described the OAS’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as a “mafia” and its leader as “pure excrement”. He also threatened to leave the OAS altogether, after the report detailed the firing of Venezuelan judges whose rulings were not to the government’s liking, the closure of critical media outlets and the obstruction of democratically-elected opposition politicians.

“Things aren’t looking too good for Chávez on the international scene,” said Mervin Rodriguez, head of international relations at the Central University of Venezuela, who said that the former tank commander is losing support and credibility abroad, with lower oil prices limiting his ability to spread influence. “Chávez has actively sought out enemies, and now that he is weaker comes the international counterattack – his enemies have been waiting for this moment,” he said.

Pro-government commentators have characterised the attacks as intended to weaken support for Mr Chávez ahead of key legislative elections in September, in which the opposition hopes to wrest a majority from the government that allows it to pass laws at will.

The criticisms come at a difficult time for Mr Chávez, who is already facing a series of complicated domestic challenges, including persistently high inflation and violent crime, as well as serious water and electricity shortages causing continuous blackouts.

“I wish Chávez would spend a bit more time dealing with problems at home, rather than wasting time and money abroad which don’t make much difference to me,” said Sergio Romero, a bus driver from Caracas, the capital.

The array of challenges facing Mr Chávez on the home front are chipping away at his popularity, and seven ministers have quit or been fired in recent weeks. Also, one of the most high-profile and successful pro-government politicians, Henri Falcon, governor of Lara state, recently resigned from Mr Chávez’s United Socialist party, signalling growing dissent and disappointment among the “chavista” ranks, say analysts.

The latest accusations will also pose a challenge for both Spain and Colombia, two of Venezuela’s top trade partners.

Colombia in particular has been seeking to defuse a tense standoff, in hope of reinstating former trade relations, which reached $7bn in annual bilateral trade until Mr Chávez froze economic and diplomatic ties last year in protest at Colombia’s deal to allow US troops greater access to its military bases. Colombia has also offered to export electricity to alleviate Venezuela’s energy crisis.

Meanwhile, Spain’s relations with Venezuela have constituted a delicate balancing act, with major commercial interests to protect such as Telefonica and Repsol, which recently won a major contract to develop a block in the oil-rich Orinoco belt. Although bilateral relations have improved since the arrival of leftist Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, they were put to the test when Mr Chávez nationalised the Venezuelan franchise of Banco Santander, and when King Juan Carlos once told Mr Chávez to “shut up” after interrupting Mr Zapatero at a summit meeting.

Mr Zapatero ordered his foreign ministry to “request an explanation” from Venezuela after a Spanish national court judge announced indictments for 13 Farc and Eta suspects accused of conspiracy to commit murder and terrorism and that had alleged ties with the Venezuelan government.

Venezuela rejected the accusations as “tendentious and baseless”, arguing that they were based on information taken from files allegedly found on a laptop seized from a Farc leader killed during a Colombian military air strike on a rebel camp in Ecuador in 2008.

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2010-04-23T13:54:00.001-07:00

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Chavez marks Venezuela independence, foes unhappy

2010-04-18T14:20:00.000-07:00

Chavez marks Venezuela independence, foes unhappy

By Andrew Cawthorne
Reuters
Sunday, April 18, 2010; 2:43 PM
CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez kicked off a national party on Sunday for the 200th anniversary of Venezuela's independence, but critics used the date to accuse him of turning the nation into a Cuban-style dictatorship.

The socialist leader -- who casts himself as the heir to 19th century South American independence leader Simon Bolivar -- was due to welcome fellow leftist heads of state, including Cuba's Raul Castro and Bolivia's Evo Morales, during the day.

On Monday, exactly 200 years after Venezuela's initial declaration of independence from Spain, the leaders of the Chavez-led ALBA alliance of nations are to hold a summit in Caracas amid celebrations across the nation.

"We are just a few hours away from the great party," Chavez wrote. "Happy commemoration of 200 years of struggle. Fatherland, Socialism or Death! We will overcome!"

As well as adopting the language of his friend and mentor Fidel Castro, the former Cuban president, Chavez has likewise presented his 11-year rule as a chance for Venezuela to finally achieve true independence after decades of capitalist rule.

The Venezuelan socialist, who came to prominence in a failed 1992 coup and then won power at the ballot-box six years later, has taken over Fidel Castro's role as the continent's leading critic of U.S. power.

Street-parties and special events were beginning all over Venezuela on Sunday. Armies of workers and volunteers -- dressed in the red T-shirts and caps of Chavez supporters -- swarmed over Caracas, sprucing up streets and buildings ahead of a military parade and other events planned for Monday.

Opponents, who have only beaten Chavez once in about a dozen votes since 1998, fumed as they saw him turn the anniversary into a massive show of support for his government.

Some supporters of the "First Justice" party rallied at a Caracas square for an alternative "independence declaration".

"After 200 years, we are again under an odious foreign domination," its leader Julio Borges said, accusing Chavez of an "indignant submission" to the Castro brothers. "The freedom fighters 200 years ago did not fight for ... dictatorship."

"CHAVISTA TO THE CORE"

Thousands of Cubans are working with the Chavez government, deployed in shanty-town medical clinics and sports training centers and delicate areas such as security agencies and energy projects.

Chavez supporters view that as a model of international cooperation, while critics say it breaches sovereignty.

Former Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez, whom Chavez failed to oust in 1992, also weighed in.

"It is not possible to celebrate when a militarized, authoritarian and pro-Communist regime, headed by a murderous coup-monger, has kidnapped the nation," he said.

Perez even compared Chavez to Hitler in his buildup of a pro-government militia. The training of teenage "communications guerrillas" -- to counter the anti-Chavez push of private media -- has divided Venezuelan opinion this week.

Chavez and his critics are building up to a September assembly vote, where opposition parties hope to cut into the government's majority and show his popularity is waning.

Though opinion polls are difficult to follow in Venezuela, due to accusations of political bias, it is clear Chavez's popularity has fallen in the last year, from more than 60 percent to about 50 percent or less.

That, however, is still a relatively high rating and enough to help him win in September, analysts say. Venezuela's poor majority give Chavez high marks for social policies including free clinics and schools, and subsidized food networks.

"This idea that Chavez is losing approval and is on the way out is absolute rubbish," said pensioner Edith Valencia, eating at a state-run "socialist pancake" shop in Caracas.

"We admit not everything is perfect and it is a tough year, we even admit he has made some mistakes. But will we vote for him? You bet! I am a Chavista to the core."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko -- both recent visitors to Venezuela -- sent congratulations for the 200th anniversary.

Chavez is seeking to strengthen global ties that work against U.S. dominance and would have been hosting Chinese President Hu Jintao this weekend were it not for a major earthquake in western China.

Press Freedom In Venezuela

2010-04-14T23:00:00.000-07:00

spite the many advances we have witnessed among countries in our region, democracy is still threatened in the Western Hemisphere.

Authorities cannot let political concerns undermine the freedom of expression.
Despite the many advances we have witnessed among countries in our region, democracy is still threatened in the Western Hemisphere. The rights of free speech, a free press and individual expression are essential to the functioning of our institutional democracies. Nevertheless, authorities in Venezuela have recently taken actions against press critics and others who engage in peaceful dissent.

The arrest of the owner of a local television channel for allegedly making offensive remarks toward the Venezuelan government sends a strong message that citizens there are not free to express their opinions and engage in an open dialogue. Without that freedom, all other rights are in jeopardy. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press must be respected for all individuals and media organizations, regardless of their political philosophies.

It is easy to look at anyone who criticizes you as being out of bounds, but authorities cannot let political concerns undermine the freedom of expression. In the end, whoever is elected needs constructive criticism.

It also is the responsibility of democratic countries to expose attacks on democratic principles wherever they may occur. In so doing, they ensure that future generations will enjoy the same rights that we demand for ourselves. Along with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, the United States has expressed its concerns about the willingness of the Venezuelan government to honor its commitment under the Inter-American Democratic Charter to uphold this principle.

In this regard, it is also hoped that the Organization of American States will enforce the charter within the hemisphere to protect democratic principles and individual liberties.

IACHR report on Venezuela: and you really thought Venezuela was a democracy?

2010-02-26T16:28:00.003-08:00

Source:
http://devilsexcrement.com/2010/02/24/iachr-report-on-venezuela-and-you-really-thought-venezuela-was-a-democracy/

Full Report:

http://www.vdebate.org/archive/VENEZUELA.2009.ENG.pdf

IACHR report on Venezuela: And you really thought Venezuela was a democracy?
February 24, 2010

Since the report is long, I wanted to summarize the highlights from the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights report on Democracy and Human Rights in Venezuela. Despite the Venezuelan Government’s refusal to allow a visit since 2002, the Commission felt it could still analyze the Venezuelan situation in order to comply with its mandate.

Here are some highlights, for those that still want to believe or defend that Venezuela is a democracy:

The Commission also finds that in Venezuela, not all persons are ensured full enjoyment of their rights irrespective of the positions they hold vis-à-vis the government’s policies.
The Commission also finds that the State’s punitive power is being used to intimidate or punish people on account of their political opinions.
The Commission’s report establishes that Venezuela lacks the conditions necessary for human rights defenders and journalists to carry out their work freely.
The IACHR also detects the existence of a pattern of impunity in cases of violence, which particularly affects media workers, human rights defenders, trade unionists, participants in public demonstrations, people held in custody, campesinos (small-scale and subsistence farmers), indigenous peoples, and women.
The IACHR’s report indicates that mechanisms have been created in Venezuela that restrict the possibilities of candidates opposed to the government for securing access to power. That has taken place through administrative resolutions of the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic, whereby 260 individuals, mostly opposed to the government, were disqualified from standing for election. The Commission notes that these disqualifications from holding public office were not the result of criminal convictions and were ordered in the absence of prior proceedings, in contravention of the American Convention’s standards.
The Commission also notes how the State has taken action to limit some powers of popularly‐elected authorities in order to reduce the scope of public functions in the hands of members of the opposition.
The IACHR also notes a troubling trend of punishments, intimidation, and attacks on individuals in reprisal for expressing their dissent with official policy.
The Commission notes a trend toward the use of criminal charges to punish people exercising their right to demonstrate or protest against government policies.
The IACHR considers that the right to demonstrate in Venezuela is being restricted through the imposition of sanctions contained in provisions enacted by President Chávez’s government.
The Commission describes cases of people facing criminal charges for which they could be sentenced to prison terms of over twenty years in connection with their participation in antigovernment demonstrations.
In the Commission’s view, this practice constitutes a restriction of the rights of assembly and freedom of expression guaranteed in the American Convention, the free exercise of which is necessary for the correct functioning of a democratic system that includes all sectors of society.
The rules for the appointment, removal, and suspension of justices set out in the Organic Law of the Supreme Court of Justice lack the safeguards necessary to prevent other branches of government from undermining the Supreme Court’s independence and to keep narrow or temporary majorities from determining its composition.
Since judges are not appointed through public competitions, judges and prosecutors are freely appointed and removable, which seriously affects their independence in making decisions.
The Commission also describes how large numbers of judges have been removed or their appointments voided without the applicable administrative proceedings.
The numerous violent acts of intimidation carried out by private groups against journalists and media outlets, together with the discrediting declarations made by high‐ranking public officials against the media and journalists on account of their editorial lines and the systematic opening of administrative proceedings based on legal provisions that allow a high level of discretion in their application and enable drastic sanctions to be imposed, along with other elements, make for a climate of restriction that hampers the free exercise of freedom of expression as a prerequisite for a vigorous democracy based on pluralism and public debate.
The Commission observes with particular concern that there have been very serious violations of the rights to life and humane treatment in Venezuela as a result of the victims’ exercise of free expression.
The IACHR notes that recent months have seen an increase in administrative proceedings sanctioning media that criticize the government.
The Commission has also verified the existence of cases of prior censorship as a prototype of extreme and radical violations of freedom of expression in Venezuela.
The report also analyzes the impact on the right of free expression of the proceedings initiated in July 2009 toward the possible cancellation of 240 radio stations’ broadcasting concessions, and of the decision to order 32 stations to cease transmissions.
The Commission calls the attention of the Venezuelan State to the incompatibility between the current legal framework governing freedom of expression and its obligations under the American Convention.
The Commission also stresses that the offenses of desacato (disrespect) and viipendio (contempt) contained in the amendments to the Penal Code in force since 2005 are incompatible with the American Convention in that they restrict the possibilities of free, open, plural, and uninhibited discussion on matters of public importance.
The Commission also deals with the major obstacles faced by human rights defenders in their work in Venezuela. It also notes with concern that witnesses and relatives of the victims of human rights violations are frequently targeted by threats, harassment, and intimidation for denouncing violations.
The IACHR also finds that inadequate access to public information has hindered the work of defending human rights in Venezuela.
One of the issues relating to human rights in Venezuela of gravest concern to the Inter‐American Commission is that of public insecurity.
The IACHR’s report identifies certain provisions in the Venezuelan legal framework that are incompatible with a democratic approach to the defense and security of the State.
During 2008, the Ombudsman’s Office recorded a total of 134 complaints involving arbitrary killings arising from the alleged actions of officers from different state security agencies. It also recorded a total of 2,197 complaints related to violations of humane treatment by state security officials. In addition, it reports receiving 87 allegations of torture and claims it is following up on 33 cases of alleged forced disappearances reported during 2008 and 34 reported during 2007.
Homicides, kidnappings, contract killings, and rural violence are the phenomena that most frequently affect the security of Venezuela’s citizens.
Information made available to the Commission indicates that in 2008, there were a total of 13,780 homicides in Venezuela, which averages out to 1,148 murders a month and 38 every day. The victims of these killings include an alarming number of children and adolescents.
The Commission’s report also notes with extreme concern that in Venezuela, violent groups such as the Movimiento Tupamaro, Colectivo La Piedrita, Colectivo Alexis Vive, Unidad Popular Venezolana, and Grupo Carapaica are perpetrating acts of violence with the involvement or acquiescence of state agents.
The Commission also continues with its observations on the alarmingly violent conditions within Venezuelan prisons.
The laws and policies pursued by the State have not been effective in guaranteeing the rights of women, particularly their right to a life free of violence.
The Commission notes in its report that impunity is a common characteristic that equally affects cases of reprisals against dissent, attacks on human rights defenders and on journalists, excessive use of force in response to peaceful protests, abuses of state force, common and organized crime, violence in prisons, violence against women, and other serious human rights violations.
On the other hand, in this report the Commission highlights the Venezuelan State’s major achievements in the fields of economic, social, and cultural rights, through legally recognizing the enforceability of the rights to education, to health, to housing, to universal social security, and other rights, as well as by implementing policies and measures aimed at remedying the shortcomings that affect vast sectors of the Venezuelan population.
The IACHR notes that the Missions have succeeded in improving the poverty situation and access to education and health among the traditionally‐excluded sectors of Venezuela’s population. Nevertheless, the Commission expresses concern at certain issues relating to the Missions as an axis of the government’s social policies.
The Commission notes that Venezuela is still characterized by constant intervention in the functioning of its trade unions, through actions of the State that hinder the activities of union leaders and that point to political control over the organized labor movement, as well as through rules that allow government agencies to interfere in the election of union leaders.
There you have it, the IACHR demonstrates that Venezuela is no longer a functioning democracy through the neglect and intimidation of a Government that discriminates its citizens even when they are in agreement with its policies. And, despite the Dictator’s claims, most of his policies show atotal disregard for the “people” that he claims to love so much.

Cuba invades Venezuela

2010-02-15T20:59:00.002-08:00

The venezuelans have never agree to this....we don't want to be like Cuba ..... we are tired of Chavez...... please help us.

Cuba Invades Venezuela
Mac Margolis

Cuba may be a fading star in the socialist firmament and run by a sclerotic dynasty, but don't tell Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan president is giving the Castro franchise a second life by farming out more and more of his crisis-battered government to Havana. A growing number of corner offices in Chávez's bureaucracy--including defense, national security, police, immigration control, and now energy--are occupied by Castrocrats. Ramiro Valdés, Fidel's former comrade in arms and an ex-interior minister, was recently picked to coordinate Venezuela's response to an energy emergency causing widespread blackouts. (Critics note that Cuba has long been afflicted by power failures.) Chávez's foes suspect that Valdés, famed for policing the Internet in Cuba, was hired to spy on Venezuelan dissidents. Other Havanians are serving as key advisers in the Defense Ministry and the newly reformed Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, and dealing on Caracas's behalf with trade unions, coffee growers, and hospitals (apparently the final straw for the health minister, who quit on Feb. 10). Chávez argues that no one is better prepared to handle domestic crises than the Cubans. Most Venezuelans shudder for the same reason.

Chávez Is Losing His Grip

2010-02-09T21:49:00.002-08:00

Chávez Is Losing His Grip
The end is near for his revolution.
By Mac Margolis
NEWSWEEK
Published Jan 29, 2010
From the magazine issue dated Feb 8, 2010

In his 11-year rule, Venezuelan strong-man Hugo Chávez has outlasted all manner of angry foes, conspirators, and mounting chaos. Until now. As he loses control of a shrinking economy, his Teflon is wearing thin. Chronic blackouts and water shortages are darkening industries and forcing homes to ration electricity and baths. Inflation is 30 percent a year, the worst rate in Latin America, and despite an official price freeze, economists say it could double this year. Crime is soaring, with the murder rate tripling under Chávez. Discontent is rising, too.

Once hailed as a redeemer by the poor, Chávez has seen his approval ratings plunge below 50 percent. A year ago, two thirds of Venezuelans were upbeat about their country. Now the same number see the country in decline, says pollster Luis Vicente León. That may not be enough to topple Chávez, whose mandate ends in 2012. Like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe or Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, he has twisted the rules of democracy—and controls enough cash, media, guns, and institutional clout to cling to power and crush any perceived threat, no matter how absurd. (Chávez recently banned Sony PlayStations and Barbie dolls as imperialist tools, and denounced Twitter as a vehicle for terrorists.) But the gathering turmoil in this nation of 29 million is like nothing the Bolivarian Republic has ever seen. Chávez's controversial project to build and spread 21st-century socialism may already be over.

The end is unlikely to be pretty. After independent channel RCTV declined to air a presidential speech late last month, Chávez ordered cable operators to drop the popular station's programming. Immediately, protests erupted nationwide, killing two and injuring dozens. Tear gas choked downtown Caracas. Undaunted protestors vowed to keep marching. "Keep this up and you will force me to take radical measures," warned Chávez in a nationwide broadcast.

This was not how the Bolivarian revolution was to play out. When Chávez launched it in 1999, he promised to wrest Venezuela's vast oil wealth from gringos and the rapacious elite to fuel 21st-century socialism, which would turn power over to indigenous people and the forgotten poor. And Venezuela would be just the beginning. With mythic Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar as his patron saint, Chávez set out to export the "Bolivarian alternative"—rejecting neoliberalism and the long shadow of the United States—throughout the hemisphere, and perhaps beyond. For a time, the new bolívarianismo stirred hearts across the Andes and in Central America.
Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua formally signed on to the Chávez pact. Cuba and a few more islands in the Caribbean followed.

Now the ballyhooed Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean has stalled. The first blow was the world economic crisis, which gutted oil prices and depleted the Chávista war chest that proved so useful in showering money on the slums, keeping cronies happy, and buying sympathy abroad. Then Chávez allies began angling to extend their terms in power, as he had. A turning point came in Honduras, where efforts by a Chávez ally, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, to hold an illegal referendum in the hope of extending his mandate ran afoul of the Supreme Court, the Congress, and finally the armed forces, which ousted him at gunpoint. At first the world diplomatic community joined Chávez in decrying what looked like an old-fashioned coup d'état—but most Hondurans wanted no part of Chávismo. Last November they elected a new anti-Chávez president, Porfirio Lobo.

Now a handful of nations, including the U.S. and Costa Rica, have recognized the new government in Honduras, while Zelaya has quietly departed for voluntary exile in the Dominican Republic. Chávez is increasingly isolated in the hemisphere. Even card-carrying lefties like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Peru's Alan García have snubbed Chávez's vision and embraced what Chilean President-elect Sebastián Piñera, a conservative, has called "democracy, rule of law, freedom of expression, alternation of power without caudillismo."

Don't count Chávez out yet. Oil prices are rising, and his opposition is in disarray. But 21st-century socialism has lost its allure. WHOEVER WORKS FOR A REVOLUTION IS PLOWING THE SEA, reads Bolívar's gravestone, reflecting the liberator's despair over his ultimately failed mission. It's a lesson Chávez might keep in mind.

"Terrorist" Twitter Threatens Hugo Chavez's Stranglehold on Media

2010-01-29T17:17:00.004-08:00

By Joseph Abrams

FOXNews.com
Reuters

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is tightening his grip on the country's media. The greatest threat to Hugo Chavez's future just might be the World Wide Web.

Fierce and growing protests over media freedom have left at least two students dead in Venezuela, and graphic images depicting violent tactics employed by the police there have started to flood the Internet.

Police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets have left students bloodied and battered in Caracas and other cities during a week of protests over President Hugo Chavez's tightening gag on the opposition press.

On Sunday, Chavez ordered five cable stations shut down for refusing to broadcast his frequent speeches, setting off nationwide demonstrations in a country already wracked by water shortages, electricity rationing, alarming crime rates and the plummeting value of its currency, the Bolivar.

Student protesters have organized their efforts by planning their demonstrations on Twitter, which is serving as both a public message-board for activists and a storing house for images of the worst of the violence.

Follow news of the protests on Twitter.
#Venezuela #Estudiantes #FreeVenezuela

Elsewhere online, more than 80,000 people have joined a Facebook group, "Chavez estas PONCHAO!" taunting the increasingly unpopular president with a slang term meaning "Chavez, you struck out."

Chavez has fought back by declaring that "using Twitter, the Internet (and) text messaging" to criticize or oppose his increasingly authoritarian regime "is terrorism," a comment that recalls the looming threats of his allies in Iran, whose bloody crackdown on physical and electronic dissent may be blazing a trail for the Latin strongman.

Venezuelan journalist Nelson Bocaranda told El Nuevo Herald that the government has launched an army of Twitter users to bring down online networks and try to infiltrate student groups.

"They are scared by Twitter,'' he told the paper, noting that Chavez fears that the social networking system will allow students to follow the model of Iran and spread their protests by coordinating them online.

As the opposition seethes, Chavez has threatened a "radical" response to student activity, promising to "deepen the revolution" and "impose authority" wherever flashpoints occur.

"There are some attempting to set fire to the country," Chavez said in a televised address on Thursday. "What are they seeking? Death."

University students began their protests on Sunday after government pressure led cable TV services to drop Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), which has long been critical of Chavez's socialist policies.

"We are not going to allow continued shutdowns of media outlets that tell the truth, and we are not going to allow ineptitude and inefficiency to continue," said Nizar El Sakih, a student leader.

Chavez's attempt to silence RCTV set off similar protests in 2007, when it was barred from network broadcasts and put on cable. But that has not deterred viewers, said Michael Shifter, a Latin America analyst at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

"If he kicks (RCTV) off the regular station and puts them on cable (Venezuelans) are going to watch cable.... If he kicks them off cable they'll find another medium," he said, adding that Chavez has underestimated the thirst for information in his country.

Internet analysts say Twitter, which blossomed before the protests but has exploded since they began, could change the face of politics in Venezuela, where hotly contested elections are approaching in September.

Using Twitter as an example, tech consultant Doug Hanchard wrote on Jan. 12: "The Internet might be what changes ... the political landscape in Venezuela.

"Make no mistake," wrote Hanchard, an adviser who covers the intersection of information technology and government, " Latin American cyberspace will be a busy place this year.

Twitter photo venezuelan protest

2010-01-29T16:44:00.001-08:00

Great link

http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/2010/01/29/twitter-photos-venezuelan-protests?

Hugo Chavez's presidential Strikeout

2010-01-27T21:50:00.001-08:00

Hugo Chavez's presidential strikeout

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

VENEZUELAN STRONGMAN Hugo Chávez is having a bad month. He's been forced to devalue the currency and impose nationwide power cuts, steps that will worsen a serious recession and Latin America's highest inflation. The U.S.-led humanitarian intervention in Haiti has undercut his propaganda about an evil American "empire." As his baseball-crazy country watches its annual championship series, a new slogan has gone viral: "Chávez -- You Struck Out."

So it should surprise no one that Mr. Chávez has taken new steps to tighten his authoritarian grip. On Sunday, without so much as a hint of due process, his government ordered cable systems to drop six television channels -- including RCTV, the country's oldest and long its most popular station. The alleged offense was failing to broadcast Mr. Chávez's live speeches -- of which there have been more than 140 in the past year alone, lasting up to seven hours each.

This is not the first attack on RCTV, which produces Venezuela's most popular entertainment programming as well as news programs with an opposition bent. In 2007, Mr. Chávez ordered the channel off the public airwaves, also without the due process nominally required by law. That action prompted the birth of a student movement that under the slogans of free speech and democracy helped defeat the caudillo's attempt to rewrite the constitution, and propelled opposition candidates to victory in Caracas and other major cities and states last year.

The students have returned to the streets of Caracas and at least four other cities this week, with violent results -- two were killed and dozens injured in the town of Merida in clashes with security forces and pro-regime thugs. On Tuesday, Mr. Chávez's vice president and defense minister resigned, along with the environment minister. International criticism is raining down on his government, most of it considerably stronger than the milquetoast reaction of the State Department, which observed that "any time the government shuts down an independent network, that is an area of concern."

Mr. Chávez may calculate that all the turmoil is worth it. Later this year, an election for the National Assembly is due, and what is now a rubber-stamp body could fall into the hands of the opposition if the vote is free and fair. The currency devaluation will, at least, allow Mr. Chávez to spend far more in the domestic market in the coming months; the attack on RCTV will eliminate a major opposition platform. The student protests may provide a pretext to arrest key organizers, or even to declare an emergency and put off the elections.

If Mr. Chávez were a right-wing leader or an ally of the United States, Latin American governments and many Democrats in Congress would be mobilizing to stop his latest abuse of power, and to encourage peaceful and democratic opposition. But he is not, and they are mostly silent. The Obama administration, too, has done next to nothing to defend democracy or encourage the opposition in Venezuela. Now -- when Chávez's regime threatens to disintegrate into chaos and violence -- would be a good time to start.

PMBComments | US Senate Committee Staff Weighs in on Insulza's Mess at the OAS

2010-01-27T21:18:00.007-08:00

I think that Insulza has done nothing on the favor of Venezuelans. The situation in Venezuela have gone worse. I want the new Chilean presiden: Mr. Pinera kick him out of the OAS, he also has a strikeout.

vdebate reporter

PMBComments Attached you will find the US Senate report (drafted by Republican Staff of the very important Committee on Foreign Relations) titled "Multilateralism in the Americas: Let's Start by Fixing the OAS" that is the subject of the following Miami Herald and La Nación (Argentina) stories (read below).

OAS.pdf

Not that many people in the world, or even in our hemisphere, care for the OAS, an organization that has become disjointed and inconsistent under the leadership of its seemingly cowered Secretary General El Panzer (1), Jose Miguel Insulza. Nevertheless the study is brief enough to be worth a read by those of us who instinctively believe in the power, or the ultimate need, of multilateral mechanisms.

The conclusions of the report are reasonable and should be implemented ASAP. In addition to the need to focus SERIOUSLY on democracy and human rights, it calls for improved financial controls, and it ends chastising Insulza for his selective actions on behalf of democracy in the region it (highlights - as I have done on previous PMBComments - his repeated blunders in Honduras, his cowardly silence on Nicaragua and Venezuela, and his obsession with playing domestic politics in his native Chile). The report ends with a call to the member states to get their collective act in shape and worry about the kind of leadership that they elect on March 24th. While not calling outright for Mr. Insulza to abandon his hopes for a second term it states that his first term was a real disappointment.

Will this report hurt Insulza as the Miami Herald implies? Who knows? Countries - actually governments - like Brazil, that are die hard supporters of both Hugo Chávez and a weak OAS might actually redouble their efforts to give El Panzer 5 more years to graze in DC. Chileans - outgoing and incoming - might rally around him even though his misdeeds have lessened the country's well deserved influence and moral standing in the region. An then we have Venezuela which seems intent on a now farcical candidacy of its own making (let's remember Insulza was their darling in 2005. many still wonder why that was the case; What did Chávez and his acolytes know about Insulza that gave them comfort to have him at the helm of the OAS?). Putting these, and other considerations and calculations aside, it would benefit the OAS that Insulza does not push his luck and further traumatize the organization by pursuing a reelection he has most definitely not earned. PMB

(1) According to a top Chilean political analyst, Insulza loves the moniker El Panzer, which would seem to denote ruthless strength as in German tank, or armored military force, but in fact the this Congressional report highlights his sloppy management of the organization and his less than forceful resolve when it comes to facing the thugs that are really bullying democracy in the region. You can see the joy when he insults Honduras' Roberto Micheletti, and we have all witnessed his less than muscular response to Hugo Chávez 24/7 shenanigans. There is no panzer there.

Miami Herald
Congressional report could hurt OAS leader's reelection efforts
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/breaking-news/story/1447097.html

The head of the Organization of American States' campaign to win reelection took a hit Tuesday from a report complaining the OAS has failed to stop elected presidents from eroding democracy in the region.

``Given the challenges described in this report, no reelection should be rushed or rubber stamped,'' the U.S. congressional staff report said. ``Any reelection should involve a deliberative evaluation of the incumbent's first term in office.''

OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, a Chilean socialist whose five-year-term ends in May, has said he wants to be relected, and so far is the only candidate. The 34-nation OAS is scheduled to vote Wednesday on holding the election in March.

But the report's withering criticism of the OAS and his performance may bolster opposition to Insulza's candidacy. Some Obama administration officials view him as too soft on leftists such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Washington provides 37 percent of the OAS' total budget.

Commissioned by Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the report was written by Carl Meacham, his senior staffer on the committee.

The report noted the OAS acted decisively when a military coup briefly toppled Chávez in 2002 and when Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted and expelled from the country last summer. The organization also is strong on election monitoring, cooperation on counter-drug and counter-terrorism and the protection of human rights.

But the hemispheric body did little as Chávez and Zelaya slowly undermined democracy in their respective countries, the report added, arguing that those maneuverings in essence sparked the efforts to topple the two presidents.

``In both cases the OAS reacted forcefully to the [presidents' ousters] . . . yet it had demonstrably failed to respond to the erosion of democratic institutions by elected presidents that preceded the coups,'' it noted.

The report also said Insulza's strong support for Zelaya following his ouster complicated efforts to resolve the crisis, and that the OAS has failed to act as Chávez cracks down the Venezuelan news media and as Nicaraguans complain of massive fraud in elections last year.

The OAS also faces a $9.6 million budget shortfall in 2011, the report added, and will have to either raise members' contributions or tighten its belt and cut back on activities, the report added.

``The OAS requires a renewed effort to make it effective and financially solvent in the coming decade,'' Lugar wrote in a letter submitting the report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Insulza, a former interior and foreign minister in Chile's socialist governments, was elected secretary general in 2005 after a string of 17-17 votes against the U.S.-backed candidate, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez.

Washington helped break the stalemate by throwing its support behind Insulza after he publicly promised to make the OAS a strong protector of democracy in the region, specifically mentioning Venezuela and Cuba.

His reelection prospects were complicated earlier this month when Chileans elected center-right candidate Sebastian Piñera as their next president. Without his own country's endorsement, Insulza's chances for reelections would be diminished.

Piñera has not yet said whether he will support Insulza, who campaigned for the center-left candidate in the presidential race, Eduardo Frei.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1225979

La OEA, en la mira del Congreso de EE.UU.

Críticas a Insulza en un informe republicano
Martes 26 de enero de 2010 Publicado en edición impresa

WASHINGTON (De nuestra corresponsal).- La crisis de Honduras parece haber sido el disparador. Pero lo cierto es que, tras meses de marchas y contramarchas, la habilidad de la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA) para intervenir en crisis institucionales está en la mira en esta ciudad. Parte del descontento apunta contra su titular, el chileno José Miguel Insulza.

"La OEA tiene que resolver una cuestión crucial de liderazgo. El secretario Insulza no ha cumplido con las promesas que hizo al asumir y, por la salud de la institución, es conveniente que los países miembros consideren las condiciones que debe tener su titular y no den por garantizada ninguna reelección", dice un durísimo informe del Congreso norteamericano.

Titulado "Multilateralismo en América. Empecemos por arreglar la OEA", el documento , al que tuvo acceso LA NACION, fue elaborado por la oficina del senador republicano Richard Lugar, uno de los hombres más influyentes en la Comisión de Relaciones Exteriores del cuerpo.

De 27 páginas, el informe, sumamente crítico sobre la situación de la OEA y la gestión de su actual titular, será formalmente difundido en los próximos días.

Si bien destaca la trascendencia de la organización americana, el documento pone en duda su eficacia a la hora de trabajar en la promoción de la democracia en la región.

"Tiende a reaccionar cuando hay una situación clara de golpe de Estado, pero no cuando hay un deterioro gradual de la democracia por culpa de gobiernos que abusan de sus poderes constitucionales", subraya.

También señala la grave crisis financiera que atraviesa la organización, con dinero siempre insuficiente, lo que se traduce en incapacidad real para operar. Estados Unidos es el país que carga con la mayor parte del sostén económico de la entidad. Y a la luz de los refuerzos presupuestarios que deberían hacerse, el impacto del informe podría ser crucial.

La nota es especialmente crítica en lo que se refiere al manejo de la organización y de su secretario general en la reciente crisis de Honduras, donde, entre otros puntos, reprocha la falta de capacidad para lograr "un compromiso" entre las dos partes en juego. Y el hecho de que esa incapacidad motivara la intervención de otros actores internacionales.

En el tramo final, el texto carga especialmente contra Insulza, a quien cuestiona por haber estado "más atento al destino político de Chile", con una situación especialmente complicada en lo personal por haberse manifestado "públicamente" a favor del derrotado aspirante Eduardo Frei.

En el informe se acusa a Insulza de aplicar una "política selectiva de defensa de la democracia", en referencia a las situaciones en Venezuela y Honduras. "La asociación del secretario general con el abortado intento de retorno del presidente Manuel Zelaya, el 5 de julio, dañó seriamente la imagen de la OEA como un agente honesto", afirma.

"Desafortunadamente, la OEA está fallando en su misión. Hoy por hoy, si más gobiernos del hemisferio se vuelven poco democráticos, la OEA será aún menos capaz de reforzar, colectivamente, los procedimientos para reforzar la democracia", afirma el texto, que lleva como carta de presentación una nota firmada por el senador Lugar.

Hugo Chavez calls using twitter "terrorism"

2010-01-27T18:34:00.003-08:00

http://devilsexcrement.com/2010/01/27/hugo-chavez-calls-using-twitter-terrorism/

Hugo Chavez calls using Twitter “terrorism”
January 27, 2010

For a man intent into taking Venezuelan into the Dark Ages, it was a remarkable admission that modernity can be a threat to Hugo Chavez and his fake revolution. As students used the Internet and its tools like Twitter as wel as other modern tools like SMS messaging to mobilize and communicate strategy instantly, Hugo Chavez made his second attack on the Internet in a single week, calling the rumors and use of this technology “terrorism”:

A week ago Chavez had said that his supporters had to watch out for the Internet and tonight he came on TV wearing a suit, rather than his usual red garb and began reading messages (which were too long to be from Twitter), calling it terrorism (right at the end, minute 3:50 or so)

Can Chavez really expect that his trusted friend and confidant resigns as Vice-President and Minister of Defense for “personal reasons” (and his wife as Minister of the Environment) and there will be no rumors?

Chavez repeated again his wish, which the opposition has paid absolutely no attention to, that to get rid of him his opponents had to call for a recall referendum, a tool that would not only be distracting, but quite difficult to achieve as the recall votes would have to exceed the number of votes he got in his Presidential reelection in 2006. (Chavez has made such a call four times in the last three weeks and seems frustrated by the lack of even a response) This would be difficult given the resources of the Government as well as the difficulty of mobilizing the voters at this time. The opposition wants to concentrate in the legislative elections in September, letting Chavez ride the harvest of his own incompetence until 2012 when his term expires.

The truth is that it is the Government has the weapons in this fight and is the one that has sponsored the violence against the students, who in turn have managed to use peaceful means to stop the violence like today at Government’s TV station VTV. But it was the Tupamaros who caused most of the violence in Merida, aided by the local law enforcement agencies. And it was Chavez who was seen mingling with Lina Ron in his Saturday rally, a woman that has led armed attacks on marches and was imprisoned in January 2009 for leading a violent attack against Globovision. Chavez can’t attack the opposition on the protests as the students have led the protests and do not respond to the political leaders of the opposition parties.

In the end it is ironic how Chavez evokes the fundamentalism of his Iranians buddies, who have also referred to the Internet and Twitter as terrorists, which is mocked in this hilarious cartoon below:

But in the end, besides feeling the threat from a weapon Chavez does not control or understand totally, maybe his key problem is that he could never make adequate use of it. For a man accustomed to uninterrupted speeches of six to eight hours, it must be simply impossible to even consider the possibility of communicating anything in 140 characters.

Cadafe's thermoelectric power plants running at fifth of capacity

2010-01-26T17:29:00.002-08:00

Source:

http://devilsexcrement.com/2010/01/26/cadafes-thermoelectric-power-plants-running-at-a-fifth-of-capacity/

Cadafe’s Thermoelectric power plants running at a fifth of capacity
January 26, 2010
Today’s El Nacional has this table compiled from the country’s Electric Corporation which shows the performance of the different thermoelectric power plants managed by CADAFE:

As you can see, of the total generation capacity of 4,507 MW installed, barely 941 MW or 20.9 % of the installed capacity, demonstrating that the problems we are having have little to do with the level of the Guri dam or the atmospheric phenomenon El Niño, but have more to do with the sheer incompetence and the lack of investment in maintenance of “Er Niño Chávez” and the people he has surrounded himself with, mostly mediocre military who can not tell the difference between a MW and a MHz.

But the sheer incompetence of the robolution can bee seen right there in that table, the Josefa Camejo plant in Falcón State was started and built by the Chávez administration, but it only produces a fraction of its potential because someone forgot to build the associated transmission lines. Thus, the plant produces too much for the nearby cities and is not part of the interconnected system, running at a lower capacity. Way to go Hugo!

The remarkable thing is that Chávez continues to blame the problem on the Guri dam and on the projects for hydroelectric power plants that he stopped in order to favor thermoelectric projects that either don’t exist and/or work as well as the table above shows.

Another day of abuse of power, censorship and resentment by Chavez

2010-01-24T10:04:00.002-08:00

Another day of abuse of power, censorship and resentment by Chavez and his cronies. Another day in which the rights of Venezuelans have been trampled upon.
And some still dare call this a democracy.

http://devilsexcrement.com/2010/01/24/government-shuts-down-rctv-cable-programming/

Government shuts down RCTV cable programming
January 24, 2010

In an act of revenge, censorship and just sheer personal vendetta, the Venezuelan Government shut down the cable signal of RCTV tonight, because the broadcasting company refused to carry Chavez’ “cadenas”, which force all TV stations to carry Chavez’ speeches whenever he so desires. (Today, he forced a few minutes of “cadena” while holding a rally for his party PSUV in Caracas, in a clear illegal act of abuse of power and Government resources)

Recall that RCTV had been shut down as a local broadcaster and its equipment confiscated in 2007, when Chavez “decided” he had to shut down the TV station locally. Its equimpent and property has yet to be returned to its rightful owners, while another Government media outlet uses it in its programming (Even if very few people watch it!)

A couple of months ago the Government issued a decree taylor made for RCTV International which managed to keep afloat via cable TV and satellite TV. According to this decree, if 70% or more of the programming was made in Venezuela, the cable system and satellite system would have to carry Chavez’ speeches.

As I arrived back at home tonight at midnight, I was surprised to hear a loud pot banging in my nighborhood as I entered my home, RCTV’s signal had been shutdown at midnight and Twitter was very active talking about the news (#freemediave).

Another day of abuse of power, censorship and resentment by Chavez and his cronies. Another day in which the rights of Venezuelans have been trampled upon.

And some still dare call this a democracy.

Gandhi: Whenever I despair

2010-01-22T07:55:00.001-08:00

In all the countries where the are little Human rights, we should think:

GANDHI: Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always.

Justice fallen into the wrong hands

2010-01-22T07:48:00.002-08:00

"In other words, the processes being administered by the Chinese leadership against its dissidents, by the Iranian regime against its protesters, or by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela against the opposition, should no longer be described as trials. "

The very grammar of justice has fallen into the wrong hands.

By ROBERT AMSTERDAM
Human rights are under attack, and language is the weapon. The very grammar of justice has fallen into the wrong hands, instrumentalized in the elaborate and sensational theaters of due process. A trial without any rights of defense is still called a "trial," a conviction ordered down from an autocratic president rather than a judge is still called a "conviction," and there continues to exist an overwhelming and damaging perception that the law and courts work just fine—an assumption eagerly embraced by the financial community looking to toss heaps of capital into subprime judicial environments.

When Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian political prisoner whose case I am involved in, was put on trial for the first time in 2004, the government applied all its media powers to project the language of justice: They held him in shackles, placed him in a cage on television, and put on a good show trial where a judge pretends to listen to the defense as though the verdict would not arrive via a call from the Kremlin. This is what the Russians call "telephone justice."

It looks like a trial; to detached observers it might even smell something like due process; but underneath all the familiar language, there is the rot of corruption, political fiat and arbitrariness. We have seen it with China's 11-year sentence handed down to the dissident Liu Xiaobo, which was met by stone silence in the White House. We can read the borrowed grammar in the mysterious death of Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani in Iran, who was arrested after testifying before parliament that he refused pressure to sign false death certificates of fatally tortured protesters. Even the Burmese junta has become a master of bureaucratic process, extending Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest after a sham trial.

In another case I am involved with in Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez goes on national television to attack a recently released political prisoner, Eligio Cedeño, and then demand a 30-year sentence for the judge who ordered his conditional release, which was supported by international expert opinion. Chávez called both Mr. Cedeño and the judge "bandits," despite the fact that neither of these individuals had committed any crime nor ever been convicted of any offense. For these countries' leaders, it is much more important that the media adopt their narrative and language to portray their enemies as criminals than it is to administer actual justice or prove a real case.

When the vocabulary of criminal justice is hijacked, we rarely can get the media to present an unbiased account of events that considers the fact that the charges may be incoherent, or the evidence nonexistent, or that the procedural games of prosecutors might be completely outside the law. For these governments, the application of the charge is more of a goal than any conviction, because they can count upon their authority to erase the presumption of innocence in a trial. They know that by simply labeling dissidents or dissenters as criminals, the public will come to see them as such.

Once someone is charged, very few observers are interested in the possible motivations of those bringing the charges. All processes are deemed regular and included within the same grammar, whether or not the investigation has been independent or the prosecution politically motivated.

My self-help remedy is a very simple one. I propose that journalists reconsider their liberal use of the word "trial," unless it is used to describe a process of relative equality of arms between defense and prosecution, before a fair and independent tribunal as envisioned by a plethora of international conventions and treaties. In other words, the processes being administered by the Chinese leadership against its dissidents, by the Iranian regime against its protesters, or by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela against the opposition, should no longer be described as trials. I say this because the presumption of innocence is also enshrined in these same conventions. This concept alone is something that autocratic leaders, in particular, fail to comprehend and regularly abuse.

So why should we provide these leaders with the presumption of regularity by trusting that their institutions operate in an independent and legitimate manner? Why should we not claw back the vocabulary and grammar of human rights, so that we become less fixated on a given government's narrative of events and more focused on their motivation for bringing the charges described?

Stokley Carmichael, the famous 1960s civil-rights activist, once wrote, "We have to fight for the right to invent the terms which allow ourselves to define our relations to society, and we have to fight that these terms will be accepted. This is the first need of a free people, and the first right refused by every oppressor."

In human rights, language is everything, and it's time that we take it back.

Mr. Amsterdam is an international lawyer specializing in the politics of business and the rule of law in emerging markets.

Chavez Watch II

2010-01-22T07:42:00.001-08:00

Chavez is the worst president Venezuelans have had. He is destroying the fragil Venezuelan economy........ I am so glad that the new Chilean government won't follow Chavez thinking.

vdebate reporter

Chávez Watch II
BY Jaime Daremblum
January 21, 2010 12:00 AM

In case you were wondering what U.S. military forces are doing in Haiti, allow Hugo Chávez to explain: “I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war,” the Venezuelan leader said Sunday on his national TV show. “They are occupying Haiti undercover.”

It gets worse. Chávez has also accused the U.S. military of causing the Haitian earthquake by testing a weapon. Really. We’ve come to expect such risible comments from Chávez, but that doesn’t make them any less outrageous.

Given the deteriorating situation in Venezuela, the buffoonish autocrat should be more humble. His country has been rationing water, electricity, and health care services. Its government finances are a mess, its public health system is falling apart, its physical infrastructure is crumbling, its capital city (Caracas) is the most dangerous in Latin America, and its inflation rate is surging. (Morgan Stanley projects that Venezuelan inflation will hit 45 percent this year. That would be its highest level in 14 years.)

Chávez has always been more concerned with cultivating his ideological allies abroad than with tackling Venezuela’s domestic economic troubles (which own disastrous policies created). He is now planning to visit Nicaragua and give $130 million to his close friend Daniel Ortega, another radical leftist who is busy trying to turn his own country into a mini-Venezuela. The money will reportedly be spent on agribusiness. However, considering Chávez’s track record of announcing grand investments that never materialize, not to mention Venezuela’s shaky finances, Ortega may ultimately be disappointed.

Jaime Daremblum, who served as Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United States from 1998 to 2004, is director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Hudson Institute.

The Chavez Spiral

2010-01-12T00:36:00.001-08:00

Commentary
The Chavez Spiral
Roger Noriega, 01.11.10, 3:21 PM ET
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez is losing altitude fast. Since his election in 2008 he's proved a deft manager of chaos--an oil strike, fierce political opposition, an army rebellion, food shortages, etc. He has been kept aloft by doling out oil revenues to satisfy the poor majority that forms his loyal base, to blunt the effects of economic mismanagement and to buy off the military and collaborating oligarchs, who reap the benefits of government sweetheart deals.

With petroleum prices down around $71 a barrel from a high of $147 the Venezuelan government is struggling to make up for the revenue shortfall to save programs that placate the poor by providing cheap food, fuel and other government giveaways. Making matters worse, the once mighty Venezuelan petroleum industry has been laid low by politicization, corruption and mismanagement; rather than producing 3.3 million barrels per day, industry analysts believe the production is closer to 2.3 million. Instead of maximizing profits by producing its quota, Venezuela's state-run oil fields are either underperforming or have collapsed altogether. Refining capacity also is in steep decline so Venezuela must import gasoline to meet internal needs--buying it at the market rate, selling it to domestic consumers at the much lower subsidized price and eating the difference.

Since late November, the Venezuelan state has had to intervene in about 10 banks, several of which were operated by Chavista cronies. These banks were favored by the regime to handle billions in Venezuelan government deposits. According to published accounts, these alleged crooked bankers were supposed to squirrel away these billions for Chávez, his family, government ministers, loyal military officers and other accomplices of his criminal regime. Instead, they stole and squandered the funds and came under the watchful eye of international regulators who have begun to freeze accounts in foreign banks. Chávez has moved in to scrape what is left of the cash and control the damage to the banking sector.

These related crises are mounting; the economy shrank 3% last year, inflation has risen to at least 25% today and the regime is running out of band-aids.

On Saturday, Chávez was forced to order a drastic devaluation in the national currency, which he hopes will relieve the government's budget woes. Under his plan, some basic necessities are supposed to remain available at a lower exchange rate, with other goods becoming twice as expensive. Critics say this dual system invites corruption and distorts the marketplace, while inflation is expected to rise another 3% to 5% and consumers will find it increasingly difficult to obtain imported goods.

Adding to the economic crisis is a drastic shortage of electricity. Last month Chávez ordered a rationing scheme after the state-run power company predicted a "national collapse" in April. He blames the crisis on a drought that has sapped the country's hydroelectric plant in the Guri Dam on the Caroní River. The problem is petroleum-fueled generators are failing too, with turbines lacking adequate fuel or shut down in disrepair. The electricity shortage is the result of gross mismanagement and underinvestment in the power sector to meet demand that has grown by 40% since 2002. Some experts say an $18 billion, multiyear modernization is required just to meet current needs.

The Venezuelan people also are enduring routine food shortages due to price controls that have discouraged domestic production and Chávez's repeated interruptions in trade with neighboring Colombia, upon which Venezuelans are increasingly dependent for consumer goods. With the blackouts disrupting domestic production and the currency devaluation, Venezuelans can expect increasing scarcity of the basic necessities of life.

As for life itself, Caracas has become by far the most dangerous city in South America; In September 2008 Foreign Policy magazine listed it among the "murder capitals of the world," noting that the homicide rate had grown by 67% since Chávez took power, even according to suspect official statistics. Chávez governs through cronyism and corruption to reward his friends and harass his opponents. His regime also conspires with drug traffickers who fuel criminal gangs that prey on innocent Venezuelans. This culture of lawlessness has gutted the police force and courts and undermined the quality of life of every citizen, rich or poor.

In the past, Chávez has been able to throw money at problems--to placate a restless public, suborn the military, turn out loyal mobs or overwhelm an opposition campaign. However, it is impossible to rebuild massive power generators, a professional police force, honest courts, crumbling roads and bridges from one day to the next. It also would take years to restore private food production and transportation capacity, even if the regime were to reverse its relentless hostility to the free market.

Although the Venezuelan people have found life increasingly unbearable, many of them have come to depend on the patronage of a strong state or remain suspicious of the traditional political leaders who have yet to present a viable alternative to Chávez.

While the regime scrambles to deal with the crises of its own making, this would be an opportune time for the democratic opposition to issue a pledge to restore Venezuela:

--The rule of law must return, beginning with an offensive against crime, the professionalization of the police and the courts and accountability of the state before the people.

--International giveaways to Chávez's client states must end, and funds should be returned to the Venezuelan people.

--Billions in stolen revenues must be recovered, which shall be used to rebuild the nation's crumbling infrastructure and to restore the oil industry.

--Collusion with drug traffickers, terrorist groups and criminal gangs that are waging war against Venezuelans and their neighbors must stop.

--Military and other security officials must be loyal to the nation rather than a destructive political project.

--Cubans, Iranians and other foreigners who are exploiting Venezuela must leave the country.

--No young Venezuelan should lose his or her life to wage war with Colombia, and peaceful ties will be cultivated with all democratic nations.

--A government of national unity, reconciliation and reconstruction must be built upon free and honest elections, beginning with election of a new National Assembly this year.

The only thing worse than a dictator is an incompetent one. Every day, more Venezuelans must recognize that that the current systemic crisis is unbearable, unsustainable and, if they say so, unnecessary. Chávez's engines are sputtering--the only question is whether Venezuelans are prepared to crash and burn with his regime.

Roger F. Noriega, a senior State Department official from 2001 to 2005, is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and managing director of Vision Americas LLC, which represents foreign and domestic clients.

Hugo Chavez, FARC and now.... AlQaida?

2009-12-01T17:51:00.003-08:00

Gustavo Coronel is an excellent writer and he knows Venezuelans problem very well. You can check his blog at:

http://lasarmasdecoronel.blogspot.com/

vdebate reporter

Hugo Chavez, FARC and now... Al Qaida?
Un Boeing 727, de Venezuela, llevaba cocaína a Mali.

A report in the UK Guardian speculates that the drug traffic passing through Mali seems to be more and more controlled by Al Qaida, possibly in association with the Colombian FARC. This is interesting, as the Boeing 727 carrying cocaine that recently landed and subsequently crashed on take-off in Mali was Venezuelan. This suggests the possibility that the Venezuelan regime of Hugo Chavez could be linking forces with Al Qaida, in a similar manner to its already existing links with the FARC. Says the report (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/drugs-cocaine-africa-al-qaida) :
“Professor Stephen Ellis of Amsterdam's Free University, an expert on west Africa's drugs trade, said that several reports suggested that the airstrip was in a region controlled by the group known as "al-Qaida in the land of the Islamic Maghreb". Previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, it was responsible for a spate of car bombings in Algeria in 2007 that left dozens dead, including at least 11 UN staff.
"Until now, there is no evidence they have had a direct interest in the drug trade," said Ellis. "But if the airstrip was controlled by al-Qaida, it suggests there is direct contact between them and Latin American drug interests."
The Home Office estimates that 50% of the cocaine that enters the UK comes from west Africa. Two years ago the government put the figure at under 30%.
Like manufacturers taking advantage of cheaper labour by moving their plants abroad, the major Colombian drugs gangs have exploited west Africa's political instability, poorly funded law enforcement agencies, endemic corruption and porous borders. But a link with terrorist networks would add a new dimension.
It is not only al-Qaida that may be involved. A briefing prepared for the US Congress speculated that west Africa's substantial Lebanese trading community – strong supporters of Hezbollah – have been buying the drug from the paramilitary group Farc, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia”. .

By Gustavo Coronel

Threats to Press Freedom in Venezuela

2009-11-18T17:22:00.003-08:00

Hi everyone:

Here a document vdebate created November, 13th 2009

Threats Press Freedom Venezuela document - pdf

US condemns Cuba over blogger beatings

2009-11-09T22:09:00.001-08:00

US condemns Cuba over blogger beatings
(AFP) – 2 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The United States said it "strongly deplores" the forcible detention and beating last week of three Cuban bloggers on their way to a peaceful march in Havana.

Award-winning blogger Yoani Sanchez, whose online reports chronicle the dark side of everyday life in communist Cuba, was detained and beaten along with two fellow bloggers by Cuban secret police on November 6.

"We have expressed to the Cuban government our deep concern with the assaults," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement.

"The US government strongly deplores the assault on bloggers Yoani Sanchez, Orlando Luis Pardo, and Claudia Cadelo.

Sanchez, who writes the blog "Generation Y," told AFP last week: "(The government agents) beat me and then they shoved me into a car head first. They did not give me any explanation at any time, but it is clear their goal was to stop us from taking part in the march."

Three agents in street clothes had snatched them off the street in the Havana district of Vedado.

Sanchez, winner of the Maria Moors Cabot 2009 award and Ortega y Gasset Prize awarded by Madrid's El Pais newspaper, said she was not seriously injured and was released half an hour after the arrest.

"Clearly, the beating hurts even more a day later; I am still really affected by all of this, but it is not going to stop me from writing my blog," she added.

Kelly said the United States called on Cuba "to ensure the full respect of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all its citizens."

Washington has repeatedly urged action by Cuba to move forward on free speech and greater respect for human rights before lifting the US embargo on the island.

Cuban authorities say Sanchez and all other political dissidents are "mercenaries" in the pay of the United States and other western countries.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Press Violations - Venezuela

2009-11-07T11:51:00.001-08:00

Venezuela

VENEZUELA
Report to the Midyear Meeting
Caracas, Venezuela
March 28 - 30, 2008

The previous report noted that Venezuelans were strongly opposed to a package of constitutional amendments proposed by President Hugo Chávez as a way of perpetuating his hold on power.
The report denounced the government’s intentions to get rid of the independent media, assault and intimidate journalists, eliminate freedom of speech, and undermine the right to inform and be informed.
In a referendum held on December 2, 2007, the majority of the Venezuelan people decisively rejected the proposed constitutional change — and along with it the government’s authoritarian policies and its attempt to remove all term limits on the presidency.
Nevertheless, the president’s control of all three branches of government has led to troubling interpretations of the Constitution, such as Ruling 1013 of 2001 (curtailing freedom of speech) and Ruling 1942 of 2003 (denying the validity of international human rights accords).
The Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, which was passed a few years ago, allows the government to control the content of broadcast media outlets.
The Venezuelan Penal Code has been amended five times in the past seven years. Previous reports submitted to the IAPA by Venezuela, including at the latest General Assembly, denounced the fact that these amendments make it a crime to be a dissident or to “insult” government officials, as this is a serious threat to freedom of speech. A few days ago, the regime proposed amendments to 22 additional articles in the code.
In early 2007 the National Assembly passed what is known as an “enabling law,” valid for up to 18 months, which grants the president legislative powers on certain matters and allows him to pass laws by decree.
Even though his package of proposed constitutional amendments was defeated on December 2, President Chávez indicates he intends to decree measures into law that were rejected by the people in the referendum.
The Casa Arturo Uslar Pietri Foundation obtained some documents used in the Ministry of Education’s curriculum for Venezuelan teachers, which define a basic pillar of the government’s entire education system as “the recognition of accurate, timely reporting from the alternative and mass media, which are tools for reinforcing a proactive, participatory democracy in which all of society is involved.”
According to the foundation’s specialists, “this lamentable dogma imposed by the government on the educational system is at the core of education from preschool through high school, and this obviously damages our youth by attempting to discredit freedom of speech and envelop our future society in a terrible silence.”
May 27 will mark one year since Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) was shut down and its broadcasting equipment seized by the government. The president had announced his politically motivated decision to shut down RCTV, the free, over-the-air broadcast station that was the country’s longest-running and most widely viewed channel. This closure was opposed by the vast majority of the Venezuelan people.
Meanwhile, we continue to see court cases and rulings, administrative penalties pursued by the regime, and harassment targeting the Globovisión news channel.
Failure to provide foreign currency in a timely manner for the importation of newsprint has been a persistent problem, even though newspapers are legally entitled to it under the exchange control system. This is jeopardizing the newspapers’ circulation.
The Chávez administration has repeatedly refused to disclose information to media outlets not under his control. Independent journalists are also denied access to government sources and events controlled by government entities.
The administration resorts to the reprehensible method of discriminating in the placement of its large volume of advertising as a way of pressuring and penalizing self-respecting media outlets that do not engage in self-censorship. Media outlets that unconditionally support the government are lavished with funds, as a way of bolstering what the regime describes as “the entire communications apparatus of the revolutionary process.”
Another clear case of discrimination concerns advertising by Venezuela’s largest communications company, CanTV, and its cellular phone subsidiary, Movilnet, both of which were nationalized last year by the Chávez administration. For years these companies had advertised heavily in the newspaper Correo del Caroní. But with the precision that typifies the regime’s threats and attacks, all advertising from these companies ceased the day after they were nationalized. Other media outlets, especially those controlled by the government, ran large color ads that day with the telling slogan, “Ahora CanTV es de todos” (“CanTV belongs to everyone now”).
The government now controls 85% of all television stations, 3,000 community radio stations, and 100 Web sites, according to a study directed by Adolfo Herrera, dean of the School of Communications at the Central University of Venezuela.
Last year the Ministry of Communication and Information spent 3,465,000 bolívares to “strengthen alternative and community media outlets,” more than 1.5 million bolívares on equipment and accessories, and 152 million bolívares on “training for Venezuelan professionals by Cuban experts.”
Communications specialists said in February that “the government’s takeover of the media to further its authoritarian political aims, the reduction of space for expressing a variety of ideas, and multiple restrictions on free speech are just some of the steps taken by the executive branch in the field of communications during the first nine years of the rule of Hugo Chávez.”
According to a research study by the Commission on Political Participation and Election Campaign Financing, 69% of all programming on government-controlled radio and television stations prior to the December 2 referendum was in favor of the constitutional amendments proposed by the Chávez regime.
Other significant developments:
Acts of judicial terrorism against journalists — through lawsuits, prosecution and persecution — have aroused even more anger and made professionals even more determined to uphold their commitment to inform, investigate and denounce.
On November 4, 2005, journalist Patricia Poleo was ordered to be taken into custody for allegedly “masterminding” the killing of a prosecutor. Under the charges Poleo would have been forced to remain in jail while the case was under investigation. She was convinced by her friends and colleagues to leave the country to escape torture, pressures and abuses.
The government’s supporters — some out of conviction, others for convenience — devote themselves to denying the truth, concealing actual events, and attempting to break the ethical resistance of honest journalists and media outlets, in order to keep unfiltered news from reaching the people and to keep the people from realizing the historical failure of totalitarianism.
The National Union of Press Workers issued a statement on February 28 expressing its “condemnation and rejection of the flagrant harassment of media outlets and their employees by pro-government forces.”
Journalists Beatriz Adrián and Diana Carolina Ruiz of Globovisión and Francia Sánchez of RCTV Internacional were assaulted on October 16, 2007, while covering a session of the National Assembly at the Teresa Carreño Theater.
On November 11, 2007, reporter Jorge Eliécer Patiño and photographer Luis Barrios of the newspaper Diario de los Llanos in the state of Barinas were beaten by police while covering a demonstration at a university.
Police officers and civilians assaulted journalist Elvis Rivas of RCTV Internacional during a student protest in the state of Mérida on November 9.
Gustavo Azócar, a journalist and on-air host for Televisora Regional del Táchira, was assaulted on camera during his morning program on November 20 by a ruling-party member of the National Assembly.
News photographer José Cohen suffered a head wound while covering a peaceful student demonstration that was repressed by the Metropolitan Police and the National Guard on November 29. Cohen received 10 stitches for the wound.
On December 5, President Chávez called Hernán Lugo García, a reporter for El Nacional newspaper, “excrement” for his article on Chávez’s defeat in the referendum.
Cameraman Carlos Toro was hit and assistant Larry Arvelo suffered bruises and injuries caused by police while covering an accident for Globovisión

Pro-government activists attacked journalist Ramón Antonio Pérez during a rally of the Copei party in Plaza Bolivar in Caracas.

A pro-government group assaulted journalist Hugo Morales who was taking pictures of attacks on university students on January 22, 2008.

Journalist María Teresa Guedez of the daily La Calle, photographer Clemente Espinoza, of the daily El Carabobeño, and the cameraman of RCTV Internacional were injured when violent pro-government groups entered and destroyed the Carabobo state Legislative Council on February 12 of this year.

The wife of journalist José Rafael Ramírez announced that she was on a hunger strike on February 14 and chained herself to the courthouse doors of Aragua state to protest what she called “judicial abuses” of her husband. Ramírez has been held in La Planta Prison in Caracas for the past month, and during this time he has been on hunger strike. Twice he has been taken to the military hospital in a near-death state, only to be revived with intravenous fluids and returned to prison. This is a violation of his right to remain free while on trial.

Pro-government activists insulted journalist Rafael Fuenmayor of Globovisión and accused him of “destabilizing the Chavez government” because he asked questions that displeased the pro-government group that took over the headquarters of the Caracas archdiocese last February 27.

Journalists were not allowed to attend a regular session of the National Assembly’s Finance Committee on February 29.

Journalists of the major newspapers of Carabobo state were beaten by pro-government groups while covering a meeting to support peace on the 6th of this month in Valencia.

Two journalists of Argentina’s Canal 5, Melina Fleiderman and Andrés Montes de Oca, special correspondents covering the tour of President Cristina Kirchner, were detained by the National Guard near Miraflores Palace when they tried to record a demonstration against Chávez nearby.

The National Press Workers Union says: “It is increasingly difficult for private sector journalists to do their work within a framework of respect for their work and within ethical and professional parameters. In a good number of agencies the immediate supervisors of the press secretaries are military personnel who do not know the basic principles of the practice of journalism, neither the law, nor the Code of Ethics. When they have objections they take reprisals.”

On May 27, the government closed down RCTV television and used military force to seize its offices and transmission equipment.

The television company has taken various legal actions, but none has had a favorable result.

On March 26, the Political-Administrative Branch of the Supreme Court denied RCTV’s request on November 29, 2007 for an injunction which would have allowed it to return to over-the-air broadcasting.,

RCTV said that the procedural technicalities cited in the decision not to consider the allegations in its petition were not applicable in that case, and said it regretted “that the Supreme Court has once again lost the opportunity to repair the serious damage that taking our channel off the air has done to the Venezuelan people.”

RCTV explained that this was not the definitive ruing in the case and said it will continue its effort to have the Supreme Court’s final decision reestablish the rule of law and restore on-the-air broadcasting to the channel.

The news channel Globovisión still faces lawsuits, more administrative sanctions and other harassment by the regime.

The chief of state has insulted and threatened Globovisión.

The government continues to systematically deny the possibility of expanding to on-air broadcasting in an effort to try to restrict the spread of its messages, news and free opinion.

The general director of the channel, Alberto Federico Ravell, said in October of 2007 the suspension ordered by the National Electoral Council of some brief reports about a constitutional amendment that the council thought might cause “electoral abstention” was censorship.

On January 31, Globovisión rejected a demand by the government agency Conatel against brief testimonial reports called “You Saw It,” which the government did not like.

Globovisión reported on February 8 that it was harassed by SENIAT. Officials showed up unannounced in the afternoon demanding that books be handed over immediately and requesting extensive tax information.

The Media Committee of the National Assembly said it “supports all legal actions that social and political organizations take against Globovisión.”

On February 11, with the slogan, “Now it is Globovisión’s turn,” pro-government individuals asked the national Attorney General’s Office to investigate the channel, allegedly for “offending Chávez and distorting news.” Three days later, pro-Chávez groups gathered outside Globovisión to protest news they said was against President Chávez, and painted graffiti attacking the channel’s executives.

On February 16, Globovisión complained to the Public Prosecutor’s Office about attacks by pro-government individuals against it.

The Communications and Information Ministry urged Globovisión on February 19 to “respect the president and the people,” saying the government does not intend to close the channel.

Pro-Chávez activist leaders declared that Globovisión was “a target of the revolution,” and asserted that “anyone can decide to place a bomb at Globovisión.” On the same day, February 27, they held a protest vigil in front of the station and painted slogans on its walls.

Two days later, the assembly of the government party considered actions against Globovisión, and proposed revoking its license.

On February 4, the interior and justice minister accused the Venezuelan media of “collaborating with the enemy” and committing “treason to the homeland” by reporting about the movement of tanks and troops toward the Colombian border which the president had ordered publicly on television.

In addition, on November 28, the Venezuelan Press Bloc issued a statement reporting a serious delay by the currency exchange control agency, CADIVI, in delivering foreign currency to pay providers of newsprint abroad.

The daily Correo de Caroni did not circulate for three days beginning December 12 because it did not receive newsprint from its supplier, the DIPALCA company. The government had not delivered the foreign currency in time.

The publisher of the daily El Regional of Zulia, Gilberto Urdaneta, also reported that his newspaper had enough newsprint for only 22 days for the same reason.

The newspapers El Impulso, Nuevo País, the magazine Zeta and other publications reported on that date that inventories of newsprint were low, which threatens their circulation in the short term, because of government delays in releasing controlled currencies.

Venezuelan newspapers live in uncertainty about the stock of newsprint and other supplies for the press that are not made in the country, since imports must be authorized by the government office that controls currency exchange.

On February 11, the Carabobo state culture secretary threatened the dailies El Carabobeño and Noti-Tarde with bombings, saying that they should “see themselves in the mirror of RCTV and Globovisión.” The official threatened that they could “see their doors close,” adding that they should “be very careful with what you publish tomorrow.”

This violent warning from the government was a reaction to the companies’ support for the “Arturo Michelena” art biennial which traditionally has been sponsored for many years by the Valencia Ateneo.

The administration considers free cultural activities contradictory to the political and ideological action the Chávez government promotes.

After this report was presented at the Midyear Meeting, Marcos Hernández, president of the Venezuelan pro-government NGO Journalists for the Truth, threatened to initiate a court case against the Venezuelan Press Bloc for having said that it would attempt to regain RCTV’s frequency. He also threatened the IAPA gathering, saying that if Venezuela is attacked at this meeting “we’ll know what to do.”

Accelerating the Bolivarian Revolution

2009-11-07T09:16:00.002-08:00

Accelerating the Bolivarian Revolution - New Crisis Group briefing
Essential reading.

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW BRIEFING

Venezuela: Accelerating the Bolivarian Revolution

Bogotá/Brussels, 5 November 2009: Against the spirit of the constitution, President Hugo Chávez is accelerating his “Bolivarian Revolution” by implementing radical laws that affect basic rights and liberties and thwart the political opposition’s fair chances in the December 2010 legislative elections.
Venezuela: Accelerating the Bolivarian Revolution,* the latest update briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines how in 2009 the Chávez government has progressively abandoned core liberal democracy principles guaranteed under the Inter-American Democratic Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The executive has increased its power and provoked unrest internally by further politicising the armed forces and the oil sector.
It is exercising mounting influence over the electoral authorities, the legislative and judicial branches of power and other state entities.

“The December 2010 legislative elections promise to further polarise an already seriously divided country”, says Nicolás Letts, Crisis Group’s Colombia/Andes Analyst. “Unresolved social and mounting economic problems are generating tensions that exacerbate the risk of political violence”.

The government’s lack of capacity to correct serious deficiencies in the management of the state is provoking increasing social protest. The continued targeting of the political opposition and the mass media, coupled with growing economic, security and social problems, are deepening discontent. The opposition, which continues to be divided, is challenging Chávez through democratic means. However, it may in the future look to more violent alternatives for confronting him, if his government continues to shut off space for participation and restrict critics from expressing their views through democratic mechanisms.

Society at large is experiencing critical levels of insecurity and stark deficiencies in basic public services.

Tense relations with Colombia may take a toll on the president’s popularity at home.

While Chávez’s bellicose rhetoric towards Colombia is unlikely to elicit an armed reaction, it does
stimulate the potential for mounting trouble along the border. “Ten years of ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ have failed to produce significant and sustainable improvements in the living conditions of the poorer segments of society”, says Markus Schultze-Kraft, Crisis Group’s Latin America Program Director. “Chávez has proved to be a poor manager, with difficulties to administer the vast state apparatus he has created and cater for citizens’ legitimate demands”.

*Read the full Crisis Group briefing on our website:
http://www.crisisgroup.org
Contacts: Andrew Stroehlein (Brussels) +32 (0) 2 541 1635
Kimberly Abbott (Washington) +1 202 785 1602
To contact Crisis Group media please click here

The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation covering some 60 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

The ideas that keep Hugo Chavez in power, and their disastrous consequences

2009-11-07T08:48:00.003-08:00

Published on The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com)

The Shah of Venezuela. The ideas that keep Hugo Chavez in power, and their disastrous consequences.

Enrique Krauze . April 1, 2009 12:00 am

I
The sacralization of history is an ancient practice in Latin America. In the region's Catholic countries, stories of the past, with their heroes and their villains, became instant paraphrases of the Holy Story, complete with martyrologies, holy days, and iconic representations of secular saints. But in Venezuela, where the presence of the church has been less rich and influential than in Mexico, Peru, or Ecuador, the transference of the sacred to the profane has been more intense, perhaps because of the lack of "competition" with strictly religious inspirations such as the Virgin of Guadalupe or the patron saints of Mexican towns. Venezuela's civic worship is unusual also in that it is monotheistic, which is to say, it has centered on the passion story of a man elevated to godhood. That man is Simon Bolivar.

In addition to parades, speeches, ceremonies, competitions, inaugurations, commemorations, unveilings of monuments, official publications, and other formal events in veneration of Bolivar that successive Venezuelan governments (oligarchic, civil, military, dictatorships) have produced, there arose a spontaneous and enduring popular cult of Bolivar already in 1842, just twelve years after his death. It was stoked by a kind of collective penitence for the sin of letting Bolivar die on Colombian soil. And so the liberator came to be relentlessly exalted by the same nation that, by rejecting his project for a Gran Colombia (which would have unified Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama), caused him to be ostracized. This Caribbean version of Moses and Monotheism was nicely codified by the Cardinal of Caracas in 1980, who declared from the seat of his diocese that all of Venezuela's misfortunes, the countless civil wars and the dictatorships of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, all sprang from the "treason" that was originally committed against Bolivar.

Official, popular, manufactured, spontaneous, classical, romantic, nationalist, internationalist, military, civil, religious, mythic, Venezuelan, Andean, Ibero-American, Pan-American, universal: the cult of Bolivar became the common bond of Venezuelans, the sacrament of their society. Other sanctified heroes shared the altar, but they stood in Bolivar's shadow, and they were not always beloved: Francisco de Miranda, an early champion of independence; Antonio Jose de Sucre, Bolivar's loyal grand marshal; and General Jose Antonio Paez (Bolivar's right hand in war, his adversary in peace, and the founder of the Republic of Venezuela). Even in scholarly circles his immaculate image prevailed until the 1960s. When, in 1916, a young doctor dared to suggest that Bolivar was probably an epileptic, the censure of this act of "patriotic atheism" against the Bolivarian faith--an "august, admirable, sublime religion"--was harsh. "How is it possible," it was said, "that a Venezuelan should ascend to the empyrean to remove Bolivar from Caesar's side, and relegate him to the inferno, beside Caligula?"

From a very young age, Hugo Chavez revered Simon Bolivar. And not just Bolivar. In his modest childhood in the small western plains city of Barinas, Chavez also intensely admired Chavez--that is, Chavez "El Latigo," or The Whip, a famous pitcher who was killed in a plane crash after a brief career in the major leagues. According to his own telling of his life story, when he entered the Military Academy in 1971, at the age of seventeen, Chavez visited the tomb of El Latigo to ask forgiveness, because new heroes were demanding his attention: Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Chavez was always a hero-worshipper. His personal pantheon included Ezequiel Zamora (the popular leader in the Federal War in the mid-nineteenth century) and his own great-grandfather, a bandit-rebel whose hazy career dated to the beginning of the twentieth century.

In Chavez's fevered imagination, the interesting thing about this past populated with heroes was that they spoke directly to him and ended up being reincarnated in him. "Let me tell you something I've never told anyone," he confessed to several friends. "I'm the reincarnation of Ezequiel Zamora." (Some say he has always feared he would come to the same end: betrayed and shot in the head.) With his contemporary heroes, too, Chavez needed direct contact, a laying on of hands. In an interview in 2005, he recalled his first encounters with Fidel. "My God, I want to meet Fidel when I get out and I'm free to talk," he prayed in prison, after his failed coup attempt in February 1992, "to tell him who I am and what I think." Their first meeting took place in Havana in December 1994. Castro stood waiting for him in person at the foot of the steps of his airplane. From then on, Chavez came to see him "as a father," and his children saw him as a grandfather.

The day he came to visit Grandma's little house in Sabaneta, he had to stoop. It's a low door, and he's a giant. I saw it with my own eyes, didn't I? And I remarked on it to [my brother] Adan.
Seeing him there, as if it was a dream: "this is like something out of a Garcia Marquez novel." In other words, forty years after the first time I heard the name Fidel Castro, there he was in the house where we were raised.... My God!

Garcia Marquez, indeed. During the fifteen years in which he patiently plotted his revolutionary conspiracy, forging his mystical links between his own genealogy and the nation's heroes, Hugo Chavez made himself into a kind of creature of magical realism. He would be the redemption, the climax, the supreme text prophesied by other texts, of the Sacred Writ of Venezuelan history.

Chavez the cadet was a celebrant of the Bolivarian passion story. In 1974, as testified in his writings collected in 1992 under the title Un brazalete tricolor , or A Three-Colored Armband, his outbursts of lyricism about the liberator went beyond the reverential imagery (pictorial, verbal, sculptural) of neoclassical history, beyond the romantic and patriotic equation of Bolivar with Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon, beyond even the grandiloquent official images of "the apotheosis of the demigod of South America." In that year the inflamed cadet wrote an encomium for the hero that began with this curious sentence: "On June 23, on the eve of the anniversary of the great Battle ... of Carabobo, Simon Bolivar gave birth to the nation." As the Venezuelan historian Elias Pino Iturrieta has explained, Bolivar was, for young Chavez, God the Father, and the nation was the Virgin, and the Christ child was the army of liberation, which, in a leap across the centuries, was the same army to which Chavez belonged. In 1978, this florid notion would produce a natural corollary: that the Bolivarian army would return to the historical scene to restore the honor "of the humiliated mother," and bring continuity to the independence movement, and complete the work:

It [the army] is your child, Venezuela--and it gathers the people of the nation to its breast to instruct them and teach them to love and defend you ... It's your seed, Motherland.... It's your reflection, country of heroes ... your glorious reflection. As the years go by, our Army must be the inevitable projection of our country's social, economic, political, and cultural development.

On December 17, 1983, the anniversary of Bolivar's death, Chavez gave a provocative speech that earned him a reprimand from his superiors and was soon followed by the staging of a scene that has become famous in Venezuela: the oath of the Saman de Guerre. He urged four of his friends to put on a theatrical performance in which he connected his revolutionary project to the memory of the national hero. Under a very old tree, the Saman de Guerre, beneath which, according to legend, Bolivar once sat to rest, he repeated the oath that Bolivar took in 1805, in the presence of his mentor Simon Rodriguez, at Rome's Monte Sacro: "I swear by the God of my fathers, I swear by my country, I swear on my honor, that my soul will not be at peace nor my arm at rest until I see the chains broken that bind us and bind the nation under the powerful." In this way, 1805 became 1983. Chavez changed only two words: instead of "the powerful, " Bolivar's oration had made reference only to "Spanish power."

In the military exercises that he led, Chavez ordered his subordinates to begin the day with a thought selected at random from a book of Bolivar's sayings, and he repeated these phrases like quotations from a timeless and all-purpose gospel. His revolutionary movement had the same initials as Bolivar. In the first interview that he gave after his coup, gazing out from prison at the National Pantheon under whose main altar the remains of his hero rest, the Comandante uttered these words: "Bolivar and I led a coup d'etat. Bolivar and I want the country to change." Those were not metaphors. The Comandante was speaking in earnest.

Upon leaving prison in 1994, roused by the historic imagery incarnated in him, Chavez threw himself into the political activism that five years later would lead him to the presidency by the electoral route. But something disconcerting began to happen at meetings: an empty chair would be set at the head of the table, and Chavez would sit and stare at it. Only he could hear the voice of his invisible guest, the miraculous participant in his convocations. The empty chair of Bolivar the Liberator became a commonplace in Chavez's delirious universe.

This admiration for Bolivar was genuine, but the management of the myth was cunning and carefully considered. In interviews from the period, Chavez referred to the "mystification" of which "Bolivar the man" was the object. He then proclaimed himself "a revolutionary first and a Bolivarian second." Yet his revolution needed an "ideology," and he needed one, too. "But time is short. " What to do? At the very least there had to be an "ideological banner." He found it in his own cult of the hero. The Nicaraguan revolutionaries had adopted the figure of Augusto Cesar Sandino, the legendary nationalist guerrilla of the 1920s. In Mexico, Subcomandante Marcos had recently invoked Emiliano Zapata with great success. But Bolivar meant much more to the nation of Venezuela: he was more than a hero, he was a demigod. Without mincing words, Chavez declared: "If the myth of Bolivar helps to get people and ideas moving, that's good...."

In Latin America , poets are prophets. In February 1999, when he took office, Chavez quoted a famous line from Pablo Neruda, and made it the linchpin of his address, and built around it the most impressive theological-political performance ever seen in Latin America. In this sermon, an extremely long text larded with Bolivar quotations applied to the present day, full of religious shadings and grandiloquent turns that were extreme even by the permissive standards of Latin American rhetoric, Chavez heralded (in the Christian sense) his arrival in power as something greater than just an electoral or political or even historical triumph. It was still more: a parousia , the return to life of the dead and of the nation, the resurrection announced by the apostle Pablo (Neruda): "It is Bolivar coming back to life every hundred years. He awakes every hundred years when the people awake."

Later in the same speech, Chavez returned to the old idea of a primal deicidal guilt, tying it to his country's overwhelming poverty, and decreeing a new historical truth: the republic that was born in 1830 by "betraying the Condor" (another of Bolivar's holy names) had brought down upon itself a curse that lasted nearly 170 years. The complexities of Venezuela's republican past--which, despite wars and dictatorships, had also known periods of true civic freedom and material progress--disappeared completely, tossed out along with the electoral democracy that against all odds had been working quite well since 1959. For Chavez, that "ruinous political model" had to die. And so Venezuela was now contemplating the greatest of miracles--the "return of the Condor," the "resurrection ... that is nothing less than the continuation of the social revolution under the bright guiding light of Bolivar."

This was the promulgation of a new Bolivar, a revolutionary Bolivar, even a socialist Bolivar. The first civic rite of this "national re-founding" was a baptism of the nation blessed by the presence of Bolivar incarnate, "our infinite Father," "genius of America," "shining star," "shaper of republics," "truly great hero of our times," "true owner of this process." In dedication to him, Chavez declared, the Republic of Venezuela would add the word "Bolivarian" to its name, and the new constitution would be "based on the doctrine of Bolivar," omniscient, eternal, infallible.

From then on, the ceremonies of the cult of Bolivar--in official propaganda, in the media, in the marketplace--would become increasingly lurid. The Chavista masses would gather in the plazas of Caracas to stage the scene of the oath of the Saman de Guerre. They would chant " Alerta, alerta, alerta, Bolivar's sword is crossing Latin America! Bolivar lives, Bolivar is alive!" They would hear Bolivar, in a kind of collective parapsychological trance, speaking his opinion across the centuries on every subject: oil, the workers' movement, the social revolution, the virtues of socialism. They would begin to shop for "Bolivarian" plantains and rice, and buy "Bolivarian" chickens, and cut their hair at "Bolivarian" barbershops. "We have boldly sought a new frame of reference," explained Chavez, in interviews he gave in the 1990s. "Original and all our own: Bolivarianism."

Chavez's unquestionable "boldness" has been the subject of a number of anthropological studies that attempt to explain its success. Some anthropologists attribute it to the thaumaturgical nature of the Bolivarian cult in certain segments of Venezuelan society. Pino Iturrieta has collected incredible accounts of these secret and magical Bolivars: the Bolivar possessed by the spirit of a supernatural being gifted with powers of healing and salvation, called Yankay; the Bolivar of popular legend, the purported son of a black slave woman from the cocoa plantations; the Bolivar of liberation theology, who died poor and promises redemption for the dispossessed; the syncretistic Bolivar of Venezuela's old African religions, who occupies the center of a "Liberationist Court" presided over by Queen Maria Lionza, Venezuela's main female saint, worshiped by those who seek love, health, money, luck. In animist ceremonies, the shamans invoke Bolivar to curse "political parties," to bring equality, peace, and liberation, to "bless the neighborhood guerrillas and proclaim a kingdom of happIness ruled by the military."

Imbued with these fantastic strains of popular religiosity, and exploiting them for his cause, Chavez has continued to play the role of magician and thaumaturg, messiah and saint--but his most audacious move was to promote the Bolivarian cult by setting himself in the place of High Priest, in this way availing himself of Bolivar's charisma. In the history of Christianity, Pino Iturrieta found a fitting metaphor for what Chavez accomplished: "Now a tropical Constantine has imposed the complete identification of a people with a national god."

II.
To what political tradition does Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian delirium belong? According to his own version, his destiny was revealed to him around 1977, when he read a book. It was, of all books, The Role of the Individual in History by Georgi Plekhanov. He has more than once told the story of his great moment of inspiration, his epiphany before the text: "I read Plekhanov a long time ago, when I belonged to an anti-guerrilla unit in the mountains ... and it made a deep impression on me. I remember that it was a wonderful starry night in the mountains and I read it in my tent by the light of a flashlight." Again and again he turned to it "in search of ideas [about] the role of the individual in historical processes." He still has in his possession the "little book that survived storms and the years; the same little book with the same little underlinings a person makes, and the same little arrows and the same cover I used as camouflage so that my superiors wouldn't say 'what are you doing reading that?' I read it all over the place, in secret, with a flashlight at night."

"He read everything," said Herma Marksman, his mistress in the 1980s, "but he especially liked the stories of great leaders." The stories--and the theories, too. In an interview in 1995, Chavez remarked that "we men can situate ourselves ... in leading roles that speed or slow the process, give it a small personal touch.... But I think that history is the product of the collective being of the people. And I feel myself absolutely given over to that collective being." In colloquial terms, he has often referred to himself as a mere "instrument of the collective being." This is a highly idiosyncratic use of Plekhanov, but with it Chavez crafted his argument for the rule of the caudillo: "If they [the caudillos] develop a real awareness, they become removed from themselves and view the process from a distance. If they devote their lives, their efforts, to use their 'mythical' power to collectivize ... then the presence of the caudillo can be justified."

This theory of the individual in history, which is really a theory of the great man in history, explained his admiration for Castro. Although at the time he still wondered whether it was "a curse or a spreading virus" for the historical process to rely on a single man, on his visit to Cuba in 1995 Chavez was deeply moved by the way the people identified with the leader, the "collective" with the caudillo. A woman at a restaurant in the east of the island recognized Chavez and hugged him: "You talked to the chief, you talked to Fidel." For Chavez, "that is the people's message, I get everything I need straight from the people, the people on the street." This "message" that he regards as "all-important" is not the people speaking on behalf of the people, but the people speaking on behalf of the leader. Where was Plekhanov in all this? Chavez had no doubt: it was sufficient for the leader sincerely to declare himself the humble servant of the collective, and for the collective sincerely to accept him as its leader, for "the role of the individual in history" to be fulfilled.

In practice, though, what was the "collective"? Did it have significant parts, or was it a homogeneous whole? And were those parts free to form judgments? Could they disagree with the caudillo? Was there a way of measuring how well the caudillo served the "collective"? Could the "collective" choose another caudillo, or no caudillo at all? These questions did not occur to the ambitious soldier. The important thing was the mystical union of the many and the one, the dissolving of the collective in the leader. That was why it seemed natural and even desirable to Chavez that Castro had "enormous influence over the island": "generations have gotten used to Fidel doing everything. Without Fidel they would be lost. He's everything to them." Castro was an example of the lofty way in which caudillos "are detached from their person, they view the process from a distance and devote their lives to collectivizing through the use of their 'mythical' power." Castro had the historical right to be "everything": he was, after all, a hero--the great hero of Latin America.

Chavez also proposed to "detach himself," in the same way that Castro had detached himself for almost fifty years. For he was a hero, too--maybe not a conquering hero, a triumphant and legendary guerrilla like Fidel, but still a soldier with the heart of a guerrilla. He, too, proposed to "[collectivize] through the use of [his] mythical power": "The body of the nation is in pieces. The hands over here, the legs over there, the head on the other side of the mountains, the body of what we call the collective. Now, to go through life and get something done about putting that body back together, joining the hands to the arms and bringing it to life, giving the people, the collective, an engine, I think that's a life worth living." He had no idea, of course, that with this corporeal metaphor he was reviving one of the oldest conceits of absolute monarchical power. His mistress noted that a "messianic glow" had descended upon her lover. According to another revolutionary friend, Chavez "was convinced that he was carrying out an earthly mission guided by a superhuman force." His faint protests against such grandiosity hardly refuted this notion: "I don't believe in messiahs or caudillos, although people say that's what I am, I don't know whether I am or not, maybe there's a little bit of that in me.... "

President Chavez has been an assiduous reader of Plekhanov, but perhaps not the best reader. I suspect that he does not know much about Plekhanov's place in history. Georgi V. Plekhanov, who was born in Gudalovka, Russia, in 1856 and died in exile in 1918, was considered the father of Russian Marxism. He wrote his book around 1898, during the honeymoon period of his relationship with his disciple Lenin, with whom he edited the journal Iskra. Originally a Bakunian populist, Plekhanov fled czarist Russia in 1880, taking refuge in Geneva. He would not set foot on Russian soil again until 1917. It was he who coined the term "dialectical materialism." Plekhanov believed that there were immutable laws of history, and he thought that if Russia followed the same trajectory as the countries of Western Europe, it would emerge from feudalism into a state of mature capitalism, which was the necessary condition for its inevitable evolution into the salvific dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1889 he made his first appearance at the Congress of the Second International. In 1895, Lenin traveled to Switzerland to meet him.

Following the lead of Thomas Carlyle, Plekhanov believed in the existence of "great men" as initiators or originators. "This is a very apt description," he wrote. "A great man is precisely a beginner because he sees further than others, and desires things more strongly than others." In this sense, the great man is a hero "not ... in the sense that he can stop, or change, the natural course of things, but in the sense that his activities are the conscious and free expression of this inevitable and unconscious course." The leader is the supreme instrument of history's search for its conclusion. His freedom consists in his ability to choose a course of action in accordance with the fixed laws of historical progress:

[I]f I know in what direction social relations are changing owing to given changes in the social-economic process of production, I also know in what direction social mentality is changing; consequently, I am able to influence it. Influencing social mentality means influencing historical events. Hence, in a certain sense, I can make history, and there is no need for me to wait while "it is being made."

Plekhanov's concept of the "individual's role in history" might have been inspired by Hegel, who in his Philosophy of History speaks of "world-historical men." These beings with an essential role in the development of Spirit, these visionary agents of History, are followed by their inferiors, who "feel the irresistible power of their own inner Spirit thus embodied." From this metaphysical-authoritarian premise Hegel concluded that the ordinary rules of ethics were not applicable to great men. "Heroic coercion," he noted in his Philosophy of Right , "is justified coercion." The moral equivalence of might and right was also a key doctrine of Carlyle's: "Might and Right," he wrote in 1839, "so frightfully discrepant at first, are ever in the long run one and the same."

Lenin certainly agreed. But Plekhanov did not agree; and this was the irreparable difference between them. Against the backdrop of the Second International in Brussels in 1903, the disagreement between the two grew deeper, and led finally to a break. Lenin assumed absolute leadership of the movement, with the support of the group that would be known as the "Bolsheviks." "This is the cloth from which Robespierres are cut," thundered Plekhanov, who would accuse them of "mistaking the dictatorship of the proletariat for a dictatorship over the proletariat." Shortly afterward he gave up the editorship of Iskra , leaving it in Lenin's hands. His final article was a prophetic j'accuse titled "Centralism or Bonapartism":

Let us imagine that the Central Committee, recognized by all of us, had the right, still under consideration, of "liquidation." The following could then occur. A congress is convened, the Central Committee "liquidates" the elements with which it is displeased, selects at the same time the creatures with which it is pleased, and with them makes up all the committees, thus guaranteeing itself without further ado an entirely submissive majority at the congress. The congress composed of the creatures of the Central Committee affably shouts "Hurrah!," approves all its acts, good or bad, and applauds all its projects and initiatives. In such a case, the party would really have neither a majority nor a minority, because we should have put into practice the political ideal of the Shah of Persia.

Over the following years, Plekhanov grew more and more isolated, perplexed by the new phenomenon of absolute power concentrated in a vanguard party, itself commanded by a person beyond appeal, a "Shah of Persia." This phenomenon struck him as contrary to the laws of history. That was why he called Lenin the "alchemist of the revolution" and considered him a "demagogue from head to toe. " But such a concentration of power in a leader also seemed to him an assault on the humanist principles of socialism. In The Role of the Individual in History , Plekhanov declared that "it is not only for 'initiators,' not only for 'great' men that a broad field of activity is open. It is open for all those who have eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts to love their neighbours. The concept great is a relative concept. In the ethical sense every man is great who, to use the Biblical phrase, 'lays down his life for his friend.'" Plekhanov did not find this variety of greatness in Lenin.

In the standard manuals of MarxistLeninist theory, Plekhanov was a wrong-headed dissident. According to Lenin, the attitude of his old ally was "the height of vulgarity and baseness." Outside of that petrified orthodoxy, which lives today only in Cuba, Plekhanov is remembered as the first leading intellectual before Trotsky to warn against the horror of Marxism-Leninism. He supported Kerensky, just months before his death. Of Lenin, he said in his Political Testament that "not understanding the true goal of that maximalist fanatic was my greatest mistake."

If Plekhanov had lived until the end of the twentieth century, chances are that his view of Castro would have been exactly the same as his view of Lenin. He would have criticized the caudillo who is "everything" and denounced the Shah of Cuba. The Plekhanov who fought for humanist values, the Plekhanov who refused to subordinate society to its leader and represented the classic Marxist critique of the dictatorial spirit of Lenin and Leninism, is not the Plekhanov whom Comandante Chavez has been reading for thirty years. He may consider himself a Plekhanovist, but Plekhanov, it is certain, would not have been a Chavista. He would have despised the Shah of Venezuela.

And judging by his political writings, Plekhanov's teacher would not have been a Chavista either. In Marx's famous attack on Bonapartism, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte , there is an unexpectedly direct connection to President Chavez's epic script. In London, around 1857, Marx received a request from his New York editor, Charles A. Dana, to write an article on Simon Bolivar for The New American Cyclopaedia . Although military affairs were Engels's specialty, and although he felt a strong distaste for what he regarded as the backward and barbarous countries of Hispanic America, Marx accepted the assignment. He wrote hastily, with his usual sarcasm, drawing on just a few sources, all hostile to the liberator. The final version of his biographical sketch made Dana uncomfortable, though he published it anyway in 1858.

In Marx's account, Bolivar is pictured as a yokel, a hypocrite, a clod, a womanizer, a traitor, a fickle friend, a wastrel, an aristocrat putting on republican airs, a liar, a climber who surrounded himself with the show of a court and whose few military successes were owed to the Irish and Hannoverian mercenaries whom he hired as advisers. That Marx's animosity toward Bolivar was almost personal is clear. In a letter to Engels he repeats his damning conclusions, calling Bolivar "the most dastardly, most miserable and meanest of blackguards," and compares him to Soulouque, the flamboyant Haitian caudillo who in 1852 had himself crowned emperor under the name Faustino I.

Marx's assault on Bolivar has always been a nightmare for the Latin American left. How to explain it? And what to do now that President Chavez has decreed Bolivar a prophet of "twentieth century socialism"? In 2007 a book was published in Caracas called El Bolivar de Marx , or Marx's Bolivar , which consists of side-by-side texts by serious Venezuelan writers of opposing views--the liberal historian Ines Quintero and the Marxist philosopher Vladimir Acosta, who conduct an elegant debate on the subject of Marx's portrait of Bolivar.

Quintero offers a history of the reception of Marx's text in Latin America, where the left has striven to understand it, to critique it, to play it down. Unfortunately, it has not sufficed to show that Marx's portrait of Bolivar is marred by factual errors, questionable psychological interpretations, sarcastic racist remarks, and hasty judgments. Uncomfortable and disturbing questions have always lingered. The orthodox proSoviet faction of the 1930s believed that the text was, of course, untouchable. After Stalin, a weak retraction came from the same Soviet camp: the infallible Marx had erred in this instance, because his sources were limited and biased. By then, several prominent leaders of the Latin American left had attempted to rehabilitate Bolivar for the left. And it was high time: for decades Bolivar had been the almost exclusive idol of the right, which claimed for its cause not only his deeds as liberator but also his growing conviction--amply documented in various acts, declarations, and constitutions (especially the Constitution of Bolivia of 1826, in which he proclaimed himself president for life)--that only dictatorship could bring order to the anarchic, violent, and ungovernable nations of Hispanic America.

Bolivar's dictatorial convictions, which were plain and strong by the last decade of his life, are what Marx condemned him for most vehemently. Between the lines of his piece on Bolivar one hears a clear echo of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte : "The constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and red republicans ... the thunder from the platform, the lightning bolts of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, libert?, egalit?, fraternit? ... all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of one man...." In his incisive essay on the text, Vladimir Acosta acknowledges this link. He notes also that by condemning Bolivar, Marx launched an assault not only on Bonapartism but also on Hegel. "An inveterate polemicist," says Acosta, "Marx turns his theoretical and political hatred of the Hegelian state and his empirical hatred of the Bonapartism incarnated in Napoleon III into personal hatred of Bolivar."

In Marx's article, there are direct and indirect allusions to Bolivar's authoritarianism. The word "dictatorship" appears in several places. At one point Marx makes scornful reference to Bolivar as the "Napoleon of the retreat. " And when he describes Bolivar's activities in Bolivia, the country that would bear his name, Marx writes:

Here, where Sucre's bayonets were supreme, Bolivar gave full scope to his propensities for arbitrary power, by introducing the "Bolivian Code," an imitation of the Code Napoleon. It was
his plan to transplant that code from Bolivia to Peru, and from Peru to Colombia.... What he really aimed at was the erection of the whole of South America into one federative republic, with himself as its dictator ... thus giving full scope to his dreams of attaching half a world to his name....

As Quintero documents, this authoritarian side of Bolivar had not just served as an ideological inspiration for the Latin American and Venezuelan right, but also for Italian and Spanish fascism. Both Mussolini and Franco identified themselves with Bolivar's Caesarism. And with their national hero expropriated by such forces of reaction, the Venezuelan left had a great need to rehabilitate him--but given its own authoritarian history, it did not have much to say on this point, and could only continue to cite the errors in the text or its Europeanist slant. Then a new apologetic strategy was found to re-claim the hero under the rubric of Ibero-Americanism, and gradually introduce an anti-imperialist Bolivar. The next step came with the rise to power of Hugo Chavez: "the Return of the Condor."

Up to this point, both Acosta and Quintero honor the empirical truth. But when they refer to the present day, and to the use that Chavez's regime makes of history, their views radically diverge, nicely reflecting the intellectual war that is now tearing Venezuela apart. Acosta explains Marx's reasons for attacking Bolivar, but he does not explain his own reasons for adopting Chavez's Bolivarian narrative. His omission leads him into contradiction. After justifying Bolivar's concentration of power in himself as a wartime imperative, Acosta maintains that historians "on the Right" have denied Bolivar his historicity--and then he immediately goes on to deny Bolivar the same protection by affirming Chavez's appropriation of the liberator. Acosta calls it a way of "rescuing for the people" the "human political greatness and enduring Ibero-American significance of Bolivar." He fails to note the resemblance between his president's "Bolivarian" project and the ahistorical and "sacralizing" perspective for which he takes the "rightists" to task.

In response, Ines Quintero cites a speech by President Chavez in which he scolds those who take Marx's Capital as gospel, divorced from its circumstances--"you have to realize, kid," said Chavez, "that this was written over there in 18something ... you have to realize that the world has changed"--and thereby exposes the contradiction implicit in the use that Chavez has tried to make of Bolivar as a prophet of twenty-first century socialism. Quintero provides concrete evidence of the "arbitrary, selective, and anachronistic use of Bolivar's discourse, heedless of the circumstances and historic specificity of his life."

This dispute between Acosta and Quintero is not academic. Acosta understands the use that Chavez makes of Bolivar, and defends it. In his rather Hegelian eyes, it is an objective and historic renewal of an old and interrupted process of continental liberation. For Quintero, the scandal is not just the ahistorical, fraudulent, and self-interested use that Chavez makes of Bolivar to justify his own power, but something more subtle: the growing political use to which he is put. "If Bolivar serves to justify the 'socialism of the twenty-first century,' he can just as usefully endorse the end of the democratic transfer of power and the installment of a dictatorial regime, based on the claim that the example and the word of the father of the nation are simply being heeded."

III.
'I don't know anything about Marxism, I never read El Capital , I'm not a Marxist or an anti-Marxist," Hugo Chavez said in 1995. He was telling the truth. Chavez was never, in any strict sense, a Marxist, nor was he familiar with the prickly side of Marx, or with his critique of power. Marx criticized the subordination of civil society to a single leader. He criticized the smothering of freedoms and political institutions, the "terrible parasitical organism" of the state, the cult of personality, demagoguery, and plebiscitary rule. And as if that were not enough, he criticized the political use of the past: "The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future.... In order to arrive at its own content, the revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury its dead." Point by point, Marx's critique might have been written in response to Chavez's plan for Venezuela.

But if he does not hail from a socialist or Marxist tradition, what are Chavez's ideological and historical origins? Whether he knows it or not, Chavez is the grotesque progeny not of Plekhanov or Marx, but of Thomas Carlyle. It was Carlyle's historical and political doctrine, condensed in 1841 in the series of lectures published as On Heroes and Hero-Worship , that envisioned and legitimated charismatic power in the twentieth century, the same power that Chavez, for all his outlandishness, represents so skillfully in the twenty-first century. The wishes of his progressive post-Marxist admirers notwithstanding, Chavez comes from a more anachronistic tradition of ideas that does not see history in terms of the struggle of classes or masses, or of races or nations, but of heroes who guide the "people," who incarnate them and redeem them. There is a name for this tradition. It is fascism.

Bolivarian Venezuela and its maximum leader have a number of reasons to recognize themselves in Carlyle, and to forget all of Chavez's nonsense about Plekhanov and Marx. Unlike Marx, Carlyle admired Bolivar. In 1843, lamenting the lack of biographies of "the Washington of Colombia," Carlyle wrote this shining vignette about the national hero:

Melancholy lithographs represent to us a long-faced square-browed man: of stern, considerate, consciously considerate aspect, mildly aquiline form of nose, with terrible angularity of jaw, and dark deep eyes, somewhat too close together (for which latter circumstance we earnestly hope the lithograph alone is to blame); his is Liberator Bolivar, a man of much hard fighting, hard riding, of manifold achievements, distresses, heroisms and histrionisms in this world; a many-counselled, much-enduring man, now dead and gone; of whom, except that melancholy lithograph, the cultivated European public knows as good as nothing. Yet did he not fly hither and thither, often in the most desperate manner, with wild cavalry clad in blankets, with War of Liberation "to the death"? ....With such cavalry, and artillery and infantryto match, Bolivar has ridden, fighting all the way, through torrid deserts, hot mud-swamps, through ice-chasms beyond the curve of perpetual frost--more miles than Ulysses ever sailed; let the coming Homers take note of it.

He has marched over the Andes, more than once, a feat analogous to Hannibal's, and seemed to think little of it. Often beaten, banished from the firm land, he always returned again, truculently fought again. He gained in the Cumana regions the "immortal victory" of Carabobo and several others; under him was gained the finishing "immortal victory" of Ayacucho in Peru, where Old Spain, for the last time, burnt powder in those latitudes and then fled without return.

He was Dictator, Liberator, almost Emperor, if he had lived. Some three times over did he in solemn Columbian parliament lay down his Dictatorship with Washington eloquence, and as often, on pressing request, take it up again, being a man indispensable. Thrice, or at least twice,
did he, in different places, painfully construct a Free Constitution; consisting of "two chambers, and a supreme governor for life with liberty to name his successor," the reasonablest democratic constitution you could well construct; and twice, or at least once, did the people, on trial, declare it disagreeable. He was, of old, well known in Paris; in the dissolute, the philosophico-political, and other circles there. He has shone in many a gay Parisian soiree, this Simon Bolivar; and in his later years, in autumn 1825, he rode triumphant into Potosi and the fabulous Inca cities, with clouds of feathered Indians somersaulting and war-whooping around him,and "as the famed Cerro, metalliferous Mountain, came in sight, the bells all pealed out, and there was a thunder of artillery," says General Miller. If this is not a Ulysses, Polytlas and Polymetis, a much-enduring and many-counselled man, where was there one? Truly a Ulysses whose history were worth its ink, had the Homer that could do it made his appearance!

This Homeric notion of Bolivar, and the comparison of him to Washington (which Castro curiously reprised in a speech before Chavez), should earn Carlyle a Bolivarian statue in Caracas. But aside from this text on Bolivar, the relevance of Carlyle to the Bolivarian regime, and to the thinking of its maximum leader, lies in the concept of the hero as a central actor in history. Revolutions, Carlyle insisted, require a hero to give new meaning to collective life. On the subject of his transcendent faith in great men (which was inspired by Fichte, who maintained that the "Divine Idea" manifests itself in a few individuals), Carlyle coined his famous phrase: "'Hero-worship' becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most solacing fact one sees in the world at present. ... No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men." And in Sartor Resartus he summed up his philosophy of history: "Great Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History; to which inspired Texts your numerous talented men, and your innumberable untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic Commentaries. ..."

In speech after speech by the maximum leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, the motifs that once represented Bolivar have been used to represent Chavez's greatest hero: himself. Chavez, too, believes in modern Latin American history as a Sacred Text populated by heroes on a holy and urgent mission, for which they are gifted with divine fire. In our time, they were Che and Fidel. Since he was a young man, Chavez has believed that the life story of his country--at least until his arrival, or the "national resurrection"--was Bolivar's life story. And in his self-apotheosizing inaugural address in 1999, one more life story was inscribed in the Sacred Text: his own.

The Comandante has believed all this with a tenacity and a fervor perhaps unprecedented in Latin American political history. In one of his first interviews after he was released from prison, he explained that "at a given moment, we men can situate ourselves in leading roles that speed or slow the process, give it a small personal touch, a distinctive touch. But I think that history is the product of the collective being of the people. And I feel myself absolutely given over to that collective being." So spoke Comandante Chavez in the antechambers of power. His dream was to give "a small personal touch, a distinctive touch" to the revolutionary process.

From the end of the nineteenth century, Carlyle was much quoted in Latin America. The positivist historical schools invoked him to justify the strongmen that the region--supposedly "ungovernable" by means of "Anglo-Saxon" democracy--needed to get ahead. In his famous work, Democracias latinas de Am?rica , or Latin Democracies of America , which appeared in 1900, the Peruvian historian Francisco Garcia Calderon found the heroic key to Latin American political history in Carlyle: he praised the dictators--the Argentinian Rozas, the Mexican Porfirio Diaz, the Ecuadorian Garcia Moreno--and saw them as incarnations of the history of their respective countries. Twenty years later, the Venezuelan sociologist Laureano Vallenilla Lanz published Cesarismo democratico, or Democratic Caesarism, a celebrated book in which he presented the theory of the "necessary gendarme," with reference to the Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gomez, called "Carlyle's man" by the historian Jose Gil Fortoul. In the 1920s, another Venezuelan, the poet Jose Antonio Ramos Sucre, presented the Carlylean cult of the hero--indeed, the military hero--together with the cult of Bolivar.

But in the 1930s a new political dimension was added to the cult of the hero. It was Jorge Luis Borges who discovered a troubling key to Latin America in Carlyle. In 1917, as a young man, Borges learned German, inspired by Carlyle's Germanophilia. More than thirty years later, re-reading the last lecture in On Heroes and Hero-Worship , he noted that "Carlyle reasons like a South American dictator in his defense of the dissolution of the English parliament by Cromwell's musketeers." Borges was referring to the passage in which Carlyle describes how, in 1653, after the beheading of King Charles I, the Puritan revolutionary Oliver Cromwell--Carlyle's favorite hero--loses patience with Parliament, made up of "blind pedants" with their "constitution-formulas" and "right of Election," and finally dissolves it to become, with the "power of God, " the Lord Protector of England.

Borges read Carlyle with Latin American eyes, detecting Cromwell's resemblance to our anti-democratic prototypes: caudillos, revolutionaries, dictators. What is so remarkable is that the connection that Borges observed has its flipside in reality: Carlyle was himself inspired by Latin America. In the years in which he compiled the unpublished speeches of Cromwell, Carlyle bemoaned the fact that the nineteenth century had not produced a leader like that "great, earnest, sincere soul who always prayed before his great undertakings." "Our age shouted itself hoarse," Carlyle wrote, "bringing about confusion and catastrophe because no great man did heed our call." Then suddenly, around 1843, Carlyle stopped shouting himself hoarse, because he discovered by chance, in a remote South American country, a "hero" worthy of the name, a "savior of his age" a "phoenix of resurrection": Jose Gaspar Rodriguez Francia, the dictator of Paraguay.

The stirring example of Francia struck him so forcefully that he interrupted his work to undertake--based on a few reports by German travelers--the biography of that "one veracious man." Carlyle wrote just one biography of a contemporary: that of Doctor Francia. He called him the "Cromwell of South America," a "man sent by Heaven," a "fierce condor." He admired his firm and spiritual rule, his "Divine Offices in Paraguay," his severity, his scorn for the intellectual forms and political institutions of eighteenth-century rationalism: "Tawny-visaged, lean, inexorable Dr. Francia; claps you an embargo on all that [ballot boxes, registration courts, bursts of parliamentary eloquence]; says to constitutional liberty, in the most tyrannous manner, Hitherto, and no farther." Above all, Carlyle applauded the tyrant's desire to perpetuate himself: "My lease of Paraguay ... is for life," Francia had said. Through him, Carlyle declared, "Oliver Cromwell, dead two-hundred years ... now first begins to speak." A South American dictator had given Carlyle new faith in the present and future possibility of heroes.

In Carlyle's historical theology, Borges thought that he had found Carlyle's legacy to the twentieth century: a political theory that led men to prostrate themselves before the "God-intoxicated," before those beings "inspired" by God, before the "kings" by natural law, because they embodied the only hope of a new reality that could do away with the surrounding "shams." From the presumption that the hero is not just another leading player or a consequence of history but its cause, Borges extracted a political corollary: "once the divine mission of the hero has been postulated, it is inevitable that we judge him (and that he judge himself) free of human obligations.... It is also inevitable that every political adventurer believe himself a hero and that he reason that his excesses are irrefutable proof that he is one."

The date of Borges's text on Carlyle, a prologue to a translation of On Heroes and Hero-Worship , is significant: it was written in 1949. Four years after the end of World War II, Carlyle's theory seemed at last to divulge its ultimate meaning: "his contemporaries did not understand it," Borges wrote, "but now it may be summed up in a single household word: Nazism." And Borges was not alone in this observation. The same conclusion was reached by Chesterton, in The End of the Armistice , and by Russell, in "The Ancestry of Fascism," among others. (In 1981, Hugh Trevor-Roper also took up the argument in an essay on Carlyle's thought.) For Borges, not only Germany but also Russia and Italy had "drunk to the dregs" the "universal panacea" that he characterized as the "unconditional surrender of power to strong and silent men. " Correcting only for the fact that Evita--like Chavez, who erected a statue to her--was not exactly silent, Borges might have been able to add to his Carlylean list the Argentina of Peron. By 1949, though, he confessed that his love for the hero had become a deep hatred. The results of dictatorship, fascist or populist, were the same: "servility, fear, brutality, mental indigence, and treachery."

In his cult of Bolivar, at once sincere and calculated, and in his idolatry of history, Comandante Chavez is part of this intellectual lineage. In his political theology and in his political action, he is Carlyle's bloated and buffoonish son. The protagonist of his regime is not at all "the collective." As is evident to everyone in every corner of Venezuela, the protagonist of his regime is the "hero," the man himself, Hugo Chavez.

IV.

Is Chavez, then, a classical fascist? Even before he assumed power, Chavez defended the need for a charismatic leader: "The caudillo is the representative of a mass group with which he identifies, and he is recognized by that group without any formal or legal legitimizing process." And "this can only be called a revolution," he said in his inaugural address. As "a revolutionary first and a Bolivarian second," he preached the need to wipe clean the slate of the past from the time of Bolivar's death to his own rise, and he equated military dictatorship with "stinking democracy." For him, all of Venezuela's military regimes before his own were "essentially the same" as the democratic governments of Romulo Betancourt or Rafael Caldera: on horseback or in a Mercedes Benz, they all represented "the same prevailing economic and political thinking, the same denial of the people's right to take the leading role in their destiny." The revolution that he stood for would bury the "ruinous political model ... of the last forty years" and put the people back in charge of their fate. And how would they take charge of it? In the person of the leader, of course.

Those were the "bad" militaries. He represented the "good" ones. Nearly as important to Chavez as his revolutionary faith in a caudillo has been the matter of his military identity: "Our movement was born in the barracks. That's a factor we can never forget, it was born there and its roots are there." From the beginning it was clear that he adored military parades, and that he regarded the country and the society as military structures, orderly and hierarchical. As for the political value of myth, symbol, and ritual: "If the Bolivar myth helps to quicken people and ideas in accordance with a revolutionary process, well, the process will tell, because if [the myth] is good for anything, it should be for the transformation of a people, not their exploitation." The theological-political staging of the Bolivarian "resurrection" has been the ongoing spectacle of his rule, from his rise to power until the present day.

On the subject of liberal democracy, his opinions have always been sweeping: "Liberal democracy is no good, its time has passed, new models must be invented, new formulas.... Democracy is like a rotten mango: it has to be taken as seed and sowed." Regarding the opposition parties represented in parliament, Chavez went so far as to exclaim, at a rally before he was first elected, that "we, you and I, are going to roll the [social-democratic opposition] up in a giant ball of ... I can't say what because it's rude." And the crowd responded: "Of shit!" Years later he would declare that "the opposition will never return to power, by fair means or foul." On his visit to Cuba in 1999, he suggested that his presidency would last "twenty to forty years." And among the sixty-nine articles of his constitutional reform rejected by plebiscite in 2007 was the possibility of indefinite re-election, ensuring that his lease over Venezuela would be for life. Now, with the recent referendum, which many constitutional lawyers thought illegal, he may have achieved this tyrannical goal.

In devising his Bolivarian ideology, Chavez might not have read Carlyle, but he certainly read his "great friend," the Argentinian sociologist Norberto Ceresole. He met Ceresole after he was released from prison, traveled with him around Venezuela, and for many years the professor was a close advisor. Ceresole, who was born in 1943 and died in 2003, moved easily between the Soviet left and the neo-Nazi right. He was an advisor to Juan Velasco Alvarado; a member of the Montoneros, a Peronist guerrilla group; a spokesman for Peron during his exile in Madrid; a leader of the Carapintadas, an ultra-right military movement; a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a professor at the Soviet Military Academy; a representative of Hezbollah in Madrid; a neo-Nazi militant and a vociferous Holocaust denier. Ceresole was the author of several books of geopolitics explicitly inspired by the Nazi general Karl Haushofer. And this brings us to another element of classical fascism that Hugo Chavez has not hesitated to exploit: anti-Semitism.

In his book Terrorismo fundamentalista judio , or Jewish Fundamentalist Terrorism, which was published in 1996, while he was associated with Chavez, Ceresole revived the theory of an international Jewish conspiracy actively set on seizing control of Latin America. Ceresole predicted that war would break out between Iran and the Washington-LondonTel Aviv axis. Unable to fight the battle alone, Iran would call to its aid a "large and powerful State" which "of course will be the German State." Then "Berlin will rise from its ashes and we will see the Phoenix soar." In its final apotheosis, Chavez's friend and favored intellectual predicted, the "German Empire" will ally itself with Russia, Japan, and the Muslim world. And in this replay of World War II, Latin America would free itself of the traditional historical encumbrance of "Anglo-America," and of its secret encumbrance, the "globalizing Jews" who have infiltrated the political structures of the region. Backed by "Eurasia," Latin America would expand its Lebensraum with a supranational army. (In 1995, Chavez declared that "we are studying the whole approach that Norberto Ceresole sets out in his studies and work.")

Chavez's mentor Ceresole would have been pleased by the invocation of a fascist lineage for his Comandante. In his work Caudillo, ejercito, pueblo: La Venezuela del Comandante Chavez, or The Caudillo, the Army and the People: The Venezuela of Comandante Chavez, which was published in 1999, Ceresole wrote:

"In Venezuela, the change will be channeled through one man, one "physical person," not an abstract idea or a party.... The people of Venezuela created a caudillo. The nucleus of power today lies precisely in the relationship established between the leader and the masses. The unique and differential nature of the Venezuelan process cannot be distorted or misinterpreted. What we have here is a people issuing an order to a chief, a caudillo, a military leader. "

This prophet of the "German Phoenix" and enemy of the infamous "Jews" Karl Marx and Adam Smith would have been untroubled by another feature of Chavez's dictatorial rule: the persecution of the Jewish community of Venezuela. In the Chavez years, and most nastily in recent months, the Venezuelan Jewish community has been the scapegoat of the theories that Chavez absorbed from Ceresole. Its schools and its institutions have been repeatedly raided by the police, and its members have been harassed by Chavista television, radio, press, Internet sites, and even by the President himself. The Jews of Venezuela have been denounced as the instigators of the coup attempt against Chavez in 2002. The theory of a "worldwide Jewish conspiracy" has become a commonplace in Venezuela. In the weeks leading up to the recent referendum, the old Mariperez Synagogue in Caracas was violently assaulted; the building was defaced and the computers that store information on the Jewish community of Venezuela were stolen. It is no coincidence that the Islamic Republic of Iran has found a staunch ally in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It is also no coincidence that in the Chavez years nearly 25 percent of the Jewish community--fifteen thousand people--should have decided to emigrate.

V.

'The history of the world," wrote Carlyle, "is but the biography of great men." "The history of Venezuela," Comandante Chavez suggested in 1999, "was the biography of Bolivar," as interpreted by his prophet on earth, Hugo Chavez. Ten years later, the Comandante might say that the history of Venezuela is but his own biography, the biography of Hugo Chavez.

Chavez's omnipotence is owed to his omnipresence. (The two qualities are often linked in deities.) Just watch him any Sunday on his show " Alo presidente "--its minimum duration is five hours--live from the palace of Miraflores. Presiding over his silent, acquiescent ministers, all dressed in red, the Comandante tells stories from his life, and yammers on about romantic adventures, gastric ailments, baseball games; he also sings, dances, recites, prays, laughs. In these sessions Chavez dictates electoral strategies, huge transfers of fiscal resources, petroleum subsidies, social initiatives, troop movements, diplomatic ruptures, busIness expropriations, cabinet changes. All of this has struck some American journalists--and movie people, such as Oliver Stone and Sean Penn--as folksy and authentic and even patriotic.

Chavez does not act like the president of Venezuela; he acts like its owner. He is the proprietor of his public office, the CEO of state enterprises that answer to no laws of transparency and accountability, the big and indiscriminate spender of oil revenues (between 1999 and 2008 he spent, on average, $122 million per day), the supreme leader of a Legislative Assembly and Tribunal of Justice that is supposed to serve as a check and a balance, the head of an attorney general's office that is supposed to oversee his actions, the comptroller of electoral organs that are supposed to be autonomous, the caudillo of official candidates who have no other ideology than his strange "twenty-first-century socialism" and no other loyalty than that which they owe him personally. But above all Chavez is the commander-in-chief of a media campaign that, in his mind, is the equivalent of a great and interminable military battle. Those who are not with him are "against Venezuela," are "imperialists," " pitiyanquis " (little Yankees), "filth."

Bolivar wanted to be president for life, but he declined the throne. He was present at the coronation of Napoleon, watched his rise and fall, and always detested monarchies. Chavez, by contrast, acts like a patrimonialist monarch. He has distributed posts, privileges, and money to his family. He has capriciously disposed of billions of dollars. He has headed a continental movement controlling--through the supply of oil at preferential prices and conditions--a number of Latin American countries (Bolivia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Honduras, and Ecuador a bit less, and probably soon El Salvador) that now behave like his vice-royalties. He has dreamed of forging, along with his "Iranian and Arab brothers," the new hegemonic power of his time. And his kingdom is not only of this world: "Christ was communist," he has said repeatedly, to taunt the Catholic Church and the evangelical community.

How has this coarse megalomaniac managed to bestride the globe? His defenders explain it by the success of his social programs and the economic growth of recent years, noting the corruption of the regimes that preceded him and arguing that Chavez was democratically elected, which gives him a mandate that legitimates all his actions. And the social programs implemented through the different "missions" (subsidized food, free medical assistance, literacy training, and education) did in fact have a strong period of growth between 2004 and 2006. But by 2007 they were in decline, and their loss of credibility was perceptible: empty shelves in stores as well as problems of supply, staff, and quality in both medical and educational services. Wanting to bypass the state in his social and political outreach, Chavez made an inefficient, corrupt, and dependent bureaucratic monster of PDVSA, the oil company that in its day was world-class, and the ultimate result was the weakening of formal institutions before new ones could be consolidated.

The growth of per capita income in Venezuela--14.6 percent between 1999 and 2006--was attributable to oil revenues, but since 2007 income has fallen substantially due to inflation, which reached 31 percent in 2008 and was the second highest in the world after Zimbabwe. As for corruption, its magnitude is hard to measure given the system's total opacity. But there is external evidence: based on numbers from the Central Bank of Venezuela itself, of the $22.5 billion that left the country between 2004 and 2008, $12 billion were never accounted for. Something similar happened at PDVSA, with $5 billion vanishing in 2005. On the Corruption Perceptions Index released in 2008 by Transparency International, Venezuela was rated 158 out of 180.

The Chavista project--the unprecedented increase in public employment, the transfer of resources to allied countries, whether as direct handouts or oil-bill subsidies, the expropriation of strategic assets such as electricity, telecommunications, iron and steel, aluminum and cement--went hand in hand with the deliberate exclusion of private enterprise, which, unsurprisingly, reduced investment to historic lows. But the effect of this weakening of the means of production was postponed because the gap in supply was filled by unparalleled imports of consumer goods. Meanwhile PDVSA, stripped since 2003 of one-third of its professional workforce, saw its production and exports fall in 2008 by 34 percent and 50 percent, respectively. What was propping up the edifice? A single brick: the price of a barrel. Venezuela was immersed in the magical realism of an economy that produced less and consumed more, thanks to the exponential increase in oil prices, which between 2002 and 2008 went up by a multiple of seven, from $20 to $140 per barrel. In mid-2008, Chavez's ministers considered it "impossible" for the price to come down for the time being. The Comandante boasted that he could take the price to $250. He could do anything.

The price of oil supported this fiction until a few months ago. But the key to Chavez's enthronement lies not in his erratic record of economic development or in the arguable success of his social programs, but in the press's handling of his colossal persona. His takeover of the Bolivar myth is complete. All the fantastic strains of popular religiosity in Venezuela, its folk political theology, are now centered in him. Of course, demigods do not share power. That is why, from the moment he became president by the electoral route, Chavez has used democracy to undermine democracy. After achieving the unconditional subordination of all the constitutional powers, he has taken numerous measures to undermine all independent sources of power and to crush the opposition.

After the recall referendum in 2004, he introduced what the distinguished left-wing journalist Teodoro Petkoff has called "political apartheid"--job discrimination against, and the political harassment of, more than 2.3 million people who voted against him. In May 2007 he closed down RCTV, the main independent TV station. In 2008, he disqualified hundreds of possible opposition candidates from mayoral and gubernatorial elections. After the opposition's surprising gains in those elections, and knowing that the global economic crisis would soon reach Venezuela, Chavez decided to bet everything on another referendum, which was contrived to legalize the possibility of running an unlimited number of times for the office of president. The electoral process that culminated in the vote on February 15, like all such ballots since Chavez has been in office, was thoroughly unequal. On one side was the opposition, without economic resources, exhausted after years of intense protests; and, on the other side, Chavez, with all the economic and propagandistic power of the state and hundreds of thousands of state employees working illegally for his cause. In the weeks leading up to the vote, the abuse of power was not hidden. Indeed, the government seemed to have an interest in flaunting it as an instrument of intimidation. Having closed, harassed, or fined the few media outlets that opposed him, Chavez devoted the impressive media network that he has assembled (three hundred radio stations, subsidized papers, five TV stations in the capital alone) to relentless propaganda for him and his regime. The opposition, barred from these outlets and slandered in them, was left with only a single television station and another cable station (which Chavez in all likelihood will soon shut down). Public employees passed out flyers in favor of the president's perpetual re-election: "Chavez loves us, and you pay love back with love."

Chavez won the referendum. Finally he got what he wanted. Now, like Doctor Francia and Doctor Castro, "his lease of Venezuela can be for life." But will it be? The grip of great men on history is never as firm as fascism teaches them to believe.

The first limit on Chavez's perpetuity will be economic. The bad news from the real world has reached his kingdom of fantasy. In 2009, the revenue from oil exports may be less than one-third of what it was in 2008. The government will be able to postpone the inevitable reduction in spending for a few months by dipping into the country's international reserves, but the sharpness of the fall will make a significant reduction in spending inevitable. Personal income will shrink significantly, eroded by galloping inflation. A possible way out would be the restoration of private business activity, but the country no longer has at its disposal that dynamic engine of growth, since it became dependent as never before on revenue that was thought to be inexhaustible. Public employees and recipients of direct benefits through the missions will see their buying power wane. The client-citizen base will lose its reason to believe. Supporters will remain loyal only for ideological reasons, or out of fear of losing the little they have. And on the international stage, fair-weather allies, won over by multimillion-dollar handouts, will distance themselves from Chavez as the money dries up.

The second limit on Chavez's ambition lies in the opposition. There is an active and vibrant civil society in Venezuela. Six million people voted for Chavez, split between loyalists and client-citizens; but five million abstained, and another five million voted against him. These are the results of a still perdurable institutional and legal democratic framework that was several generations in the making. The opposition is a dissident mass made up of elements from a wide social spectrum: workers, housewives, union leaders, small-and medium-size business owners, intellectuals, academics, artists, writers, priests, journalists, and a significant segment of the poor. Students in particular have been in the vanguard of this fight. For them, the idea that this caudillo will govern their children and grandchildren is unthinkable.

The third factor that may hurt Chavez is regional geopolitics. A few days before the recent referendum, Fidel Castro--the "father of Chavez"--compared Chavez to Bolivar and spoke of the "return of the Condor." But Raul Castro, Chavez's "uncle," may not concur with such a heroic interpretation of his "nephew." The establishment of friendly relations between Cuba, Brazil, and Chile, leading to the thawing of Cuba's relations with the United States (including, of course, the urgent lifting of the embargo), would isolate Chavez. In such circumstances, his approach to power would seem increasingly solipsistic and anachronistic.

But finally Chavez will most likely be brought down by himself. Faced with the economic crisis, and the pressure from the opposition, and the hostile geopolitical context, will he harden his policies and radicalize his positions, or will he come to his senses? What seems most likely, I think, is that he will move toward a Cuban model, with Iran playing the role of the Soviet Union. If Bolivar was the hero of the nineteenth century and Castro of the twentieth, Chavez will seek the same glory in the twenty-first. He will let tensions build to the breaking point. He will, as some socialists used to say, sharpen the contradictions. And then Venezuela, as so many times in its history, will be plunged into blood.

Enrique Krauze is the editor of Letras Libres and the author of Biography of Power: A History of Modern Mexico, 1810-1996 (Harper Perennial). This essay was translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer.

Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/article/books/the-shah-venezuela

Friend in low places

2009-09-16T20:07:00.004-07:00

I agree with this statement:

"Although this seems far-fetched perhaps the world should start to take him a little more seriously"

Vdebate reporter

Friends in low places

Sep 15th 2009 CARACAS
From Economist.com

Hugo Chávez dreams of forging a new world order
Shutterstock/AFP

THE mountains and jungles of South America are not ideal terrain for tank warfare. So it is hard to envisage what role Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, has in mind for the dozens of Russian tanks on his latest military shopping list. The strategic purpose of a recent tour that took him to some of the world’s least salubrious regimes is, however, easier to discern. And it led America’s State Department to give warning on Monday September 14th of a “serious challenge to stability” in the region.

Venezuela’s increasingly autocratic leader returned on Friday from a trip that took him to Libya, Iran, Algeria, Syria, Turkmenistan, Belarus and Russia, though he also found time for a visit Spain and the Venice film festival. On his jaunt he was decorated by Libya’s leader, Muammar Qaddafi, and embraced by Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus.

Apart from discussing weapons and oil with the Russians, he also courted condemnation by inviting Sudan’s pariah president, Omar al-Bashir, to Caracas, and breezily announced a nuclear co-operation deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president. Since the latter revelation was made to Le Figaro, a French newspaper, it fell to the French foreign ministry to issue a curt reminder of UN Security Council resolution 1737. This explicitly forbids the export by Iran of material from its controversial nuclear programme, which Mr Chávez supports.

The trip did much to bolster Mr Chávez’s well-earned reputation for outrageous statements. But there is method to his madness. The foreign-policy section of Venezuela’s “First Socialist Plan—2007-2013” (dubbed the “Simón Bolívar National Project”) assigns an “integral political alliance” with Iran, Syria, Belarus and Russia the highest priority outside the Latin American and Caribbean region. The rationale for this curious hotchpotch of alliances is the “common anti-imperialist interests” of those five countries—the imperialist in question being America.

Among the scheme’s aims is the strengthening of national defence and sovereignty. Not only the tanks but sophisticated anti-aircraft systems make up the order to Russia. Mr Chávez, a former lieutenant-colonel in Venezuela’s army, says these weapons will make it “very difficult for foreign aircraft to come and bomb us”. Having already spent at least $4.4 billion on Russian weapons, he has now secured an additional $2.2 billion credit-line from that country to lavish on more military hardware. Three submarines are among other possible purchases, press reports say.

In pursuit of his goal to “break North American imperialist hegemony”, the Venezuelan president has deployed to the full his prime asset—the country’s oil reserves. Thus Iran was promised 20,000 barrels of petrol a day, in potential defiance of sanctions advocated by America and despite Venezuela’s current problems supplying its own markets with fuel. Russia’s national oil consortium was also assigned a patch of the Orinoco heavy oil belt.

Closer to home, Mr Chávez’s strategic plans have come a little unstuck. He has so far failed in his quest for admittance to the Mercosur trade block. ALBA, his alliance of like-minded governments, lost a member after a coup in Honduras just over six weeks ago. And he has failed to secure regional condemnation of Colombia’s decision to allow American troops to deploy in seven military bases in the country.

Undaunted, he continues to pursue “greater world leadership”. If attention is what he is seeking, he finally seems to have got it. Last week Robert Morgenthau, a veteran New York district attorney, gave warning that Venezuela’s alliance with Iran was a threat to American interests. Bank accounts in Andorra supposedly belonging to individuals close to Mr Chávez have been frozen, reportedly because of the American Treasury Department’s suspicions of links to terrorism.

Mr Chávez is determined to play in the big leagues. His avowed calculation is that by helping to stir up trouble for America in many places simultaneously, he can bring about the collapse of “the empire”. The regimes he is so assiduously cultivating are, by this account, the nucleus of a new world order. Although this seems far-fetched perhaps the world should start to take him a little more seriously.